Managing university-community engagement (UCE): The case of UUM

Abstract

Nowadays, the debate on university community engagement (UCE) has received a huge attention by many parties and can be considered as high profile issue over the academic world. The UCE is considered as one of the university’s mechanisms in discharging its social responsibility to its nearby community. University is highly recommended to embed community engagement responsibility into the university’s policy as part of the its commitment to improve the well-being of society surrounding the campus. The objectives of this study are to describe the process of managing UCE activities at Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) and to identify factors, challenges and benefits of engaging in the activities. To achieve these objectives, twelve respondents have been interviewed and a number of UCE documents have been reviewed. The findings of this study reveal that the social activities at UUM excel beyond the philanthropic activities and have been progressed from short term program towards the long term engagement programs. The UCE activities have shown a good progress in term of its planning and implementation. However, UUM may need to take a consideration on how to overcome the challenges they may face such as lack of financial resources and inefficiency in managing UCE As such, the findings of this study provide a new insight of the management process for a higher education institution to engage with the good UCE programs. However, one size does not fit all. Therefore, a future study could be conducted using multiple case studies that may help to gain more understanding of the university's commitment towards UCE programs.