UNO’s new Community Engagement Center was completed in March and had its grand opening yesterday.
Sara Woods, Assistant to Senior Vice Chancellor for Community Engagement, says the center is a 60,000 square foot facility.
She says the Center has three purposes. One is to extend the university’s engagement efforts more broadly into the community.
The second is to increase community access to the campus for engagement purposes and to engage more students.
The third purpose is to give faculty and staff opportunities to be more involved with the community.
Woods says there are different types of organizations represented in the engagement center.
"We’ve got permanent, UNO-based organizations like the Service Learning Academy, our student volunteer and leadership organization called The Collaborative and the Buffett Early Childhood Institute located here. And those organizations are here permanently, meaning they are housed here in the building.”
Woods says the other organizations in the center are university and community partners.
She says these organizations were selected through a competitive process based on a set of values identified through community and university advisory committee.
Woods says those values included things like reciprocity, inclusiveness, and commitment to communication.