Centre for Community Engagement and Social Change Year End Report 2024-2025
Vision and Mission
The mission and vision of the centre has been continuously evolving. We are excited to include our most recent version, created as a beginning point for our official launch in 2024.
The vision of the Centre for Community Engagement and Social Change (CCESC) is to build a world in which all students, families, and communities belong and flourish by advancing equitable and inclusive education.
Our mission is to apply the principles and practices of participatory and transformative community-engaged research and teaching in partnership with educational leaders, schools, students, family members, and community organizations at local, national, and international levels. Through these partnerships we develop educational policies and practices that support belonging and flourishing. We build innovative research-driven, collaborative solutions, training, and resources for the most pressing challenges in education.
We are realizing our vision and mission by:
- Reimagining educational practices, policies, and cultures through prioritizing the knowledges and perspectives of historically marginalized groups in education.
- Engaging community-based research to develop, implement, and evaluate community-led initiatives with local, national, and international partners.
- Advancing knowledge by using research results to realize our mission and vision.
- Engaging the arts and story to bring communities together, gain new insights and share experiences about pressing educational challenges.
- Creating networks and mentorship opportunities for faculty, students, staff and partners interested in implementing community engaged research, evaluation and teaching initiatives.
The CCESC is guided by the core principles of community participation, collaboration, reciprocity and impact in research. We embrace the Carnegie Foundation’s (2021) definition of community engagement.
“Community engagement describes collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.
A Story of Emergence
The Centre for Community Engagement and Social Change (CCESC) was the vision of Dean Rebecca Luce-Kapler, whose work in educational leadership in various spaces of public school (K-12) and higher education led to a vision of a community engaged research hub for social change in the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University that works to solve the complex problems faced by historically excluded communities in education.
Beginning in 2022-2023, the foundations for this Centre were led by Dr. Amanda Cooper, Associate Dean of Research and Strategic Initiatives, by initiating consultations with leadership, faculty, staff, and students to gather input about their vision and goals for community engagement and social change. Dr. Amanda Cooper worked closely with Rebecca Carnevale, Manager of Communications, alongside Dean Luce-Kapler to lay a strong foundation for the CCESC.
Initial CCESC efforts in 2022 included an invited presentation to Vice President of Research on building research centres and competing for advancement funding; a co-production day and open meeting with faculty to co-develop a collaborative governance structure, strategic research clusters, key priorities and potential partnerships. Then, in 2023 the senior leadership focused on hiring a Chair in Student Success and Wellness (Dr. Patty Douglas), appointing a Faculty Chair (Dr. Michelle Searle) and producing a report the CCESC on progress to date.
Working with an initial strategic plan, featuring mico, medo and macro dimensions, throughout 2023-2024, a core of three, Drs. Cooper, Douglas and Searle refined strategic goals and a budget to guide the CCESC. Their initial vision for the CCESC included bringing together dedicated researchers, staff and students at the Queen’s Faculty of Education with community partners to support positive transformation in teaching, research, and everyday lives. By nurturing and creating new partnerships, the CCCESC aimed to create innovative solutions, training, and resources for the most pressing challenges in education. The CCESC co-leads shared a vision that the CCESC would support research collaborations and projects for transformative education. CCESC efforts were designed to align and create synergy with faculty research interests by building on projects in arts for social change, decolonizing efforts, digital storytelling, disability and autism, climate change, equity, evaluation, food security, leadership, literacy and technology.
Since its inception, the CCESC has continued to emerge in response to strategic direction, senior leadership input, and advancement efforts. Throughout 2024-2025, Dr. Patty Douglas was appointed to the role of Director with Dr. Michelle Searle as Associate Director. Jennifer Thompson has worked tirelessly in the part-time role of project manager. Together they have refined a vision for the CCESC that cultivates long-lasting relationships with historically marginalized communities, creating a space where mutual growth and feedback thrive. This report provides a snapshot of the CCESC goals and activities approved by Dean Luce-Kapler for the period of May 1 2024-April 31, 2025. Each goal includes an introduction, bringing the goal to life, and future directions.