Increasing Level of Community Involvement, Impact, Trust, and Communication flow
2.3 Concept of Community Academic Outreach of the University
of every faculty; the students have learned to develop themselves by participating in community service directly. For example, the case studies of Academic Outreach:
Health Careers Enhancement Program for Minorities of Phillips and Wile (1990: 841- 846), the students of Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) School of Medicine have opportunity to provide healthcare service to community. This case implies that the students could improve their communication and community relationship skills before graduation. At the same time, the academic outreach of the university could connect to community members who never knew about the university services or even applied their children to the university. It changes the community’s perspective to accept the university mission (Schneider, 2003: 203). This case study is related to the research of Geller, Zuckerman and Seidel (2014: 151-175), who found that service learning is a method to create community relationship as well as understand more about community potential.
Generally, there are departments working for community service such as the departments that provide information service, serve as academic outreach, and serve as advisors for community research. Besides, the university indicates that every faculty has to manage their own academic outreach mission to the community. This is part of the sustainable development of the country. To conclude, academic outreach is important to the community, society, and country. It also enhances new knowledge and innovation for the university.
2.3.2 Description of Academic Outreach of University
Thinapan Nakata (2003: 125) explains the description for academic outreach of the university in that it covers extra teaching, seminars, surveys, design, invention, giving advice, and study possibility. Moreover, the Education Criteria for Performance Excellence (EdPEx) 2015-2018 defines academic outreach as a part of “Service” and also includes other kinds of service such as research, healthcare services, advisors, and the products that are associated with the university mission (Bureau of Higher Education Standards and Evaluation, 2016: 104). However, academic outreach could be arranged as the activity outside or inside the university, although outside persons could receive services (Office of Quality Assurance of Kasetsart University, 2011a: 24).
The study of library service by Schneider (2003: 200) categorised 2 parts as follows: 1)
academic service coordination with a library located in the same area; 2) academic service relating to organizations such as museums, government agencies, and community service departments. Besides, the research results of Toce and Schofield (2011: 312-321) identified an academic outreach strategy for library service, which indicated that the library should make a strategic plan and develop duty role on community academic outreach other than publishing service to students in university. This is done in order to contribute the sharing of benefits and develop the community together.
In terms of the description for academic outreach of the university in Thailand, it was found that the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment classified the academic service of university into 10 groups as follows (Office of Quality Assurance of Kasetsart University, 2011a: 24):
1) Service to analyze, test, verify, and resolve 2) Service of providing educational tools
3) Service of training courses, seminars, workshops with registration fees 4) Service of free training courses, seminars, and workshops
5) Service of training courses, seminars, and workshops by hiring 6) Service of healthcare other than the responsibility of related organizations
7) Service of education, research, survey, planning, and management 8) Service of study appropriate for projects affecting the environment 9) Service of building systems, design, creation, innovation, and production
10) Other services
Nowadays, the services of academic outreach have been changed due to the growth of the community and environment. The services usually begin with giving priority to family, neighbours, and the community near the university (Gee, 2010: 7) as a form of partnership creation. The goal is to create a connection for good relationships in terms of academic, community service, knowledge development, competency among academic staff and students, and also university resource management (Murray, Crain, Meyer, McDonough and Schweiss, 2010: 252). This is a strategy to succeed in academic outreach (Killeen, Ruby, Delaney, Kleinpell, Hinch and Barginere, 2015: 57-59).
The study of Murray, Schappe, Kreienkamp, Loyd and Buck (2010: 295-299) concenred
partnerships in community service to improve the potential of students in the Faculty of Nursing. The study found that community activities during study lessons caused positive results for the students before starting work. It helps to increase the number of student registrations in the Faculty of Nursing as well as because the community’s attitude towards the faculty becomes more positive. This is associated with the research results of Perilla (2010: 97-110). Prawate Wasee (2014: 98-101) sees that the strength of the university is academic service, which could develop the community and society.
He suggests that the university should participate more in community engagement.
Also, Mbah (2016: 1-14) states that the social relationship could drive the progress of the university. There should be guidelines and encouragement for sharing activities.
The method mentioned above is associated with community academic outreach, as follows.
1) The executives of the university have to build community trust by getting into the community more.
2) A lesson for communication education should be implemented into the curriculum and emphasise more on workshops so the students can learn more about community needs and be connectors between the university and community.
3) There should be support for teachers to produce research that supports community strength.
4) It is to support information survey in the community.
5) It is to support provincial projects such as information survey in the province, targeting the purpose and shared vision of the province, academic supporting, developing competency of human resource, self-development and driving movement in the province, and helping communication inside and outside the province.
As mentioned above, it can be concluded that the job description of academic outreach service of the university has various details and is expressed as providing services to people other than academic students. At present, the services of academic outreach usually emphasise customer relationships, especially those customers in the community. This is the method to create sustainable relationships between the university and the community in its area. Also, academic outreach could be useful to the community for real change.