Workshop #6: Burst Your Academic Bubble

It's not uncommon to hear people remark "Yes Virginia, there is life outside the university!' Undergrads often sound relieved to hear this. Even more often, PhD students just sound surprised. At the final Creating Community workshop, the group discussed the challenges, rewards & strategies of reaching out to, as well as drawing in, communities into our lives and classrooms.

The learning goals for the workshop were:
1. To explore your community connections.
2. Consider the costs and benefits of reaching out to these communities.
3. Consider how these interactions affect your teaching.


We explored ways we could contribute to outside communities through our research, teaching and non-academic service. And we talked about how we could enrich ourselves and our classrooms by starting to break down the barriers between town (that is, non-academic communities) and gown. We began with participants constructing a concept map of all the communities they currently interact with (circles connected with solid arrows) and communities they would like to interact with but are not able to (squares with dashed arrows).

Some of the noted advantages to conducting outreach (in whatever capacity or form one is most comfortable with) were discussed. It became apparent that interacting with a variety of communities has professional advantages (for future employment or collaboration), has rejuvenating properties (the road to a graduate degree is long, but planting trees offers immediate satisfaction!) and helps us be better communicators (explaining our research to others outside of academia).

Some of the disadvantages we discussed include the amount of time it takes to find communities and projects to get involved in. Also, the emphasis of our graduate school career falls squarely on our ability to make meaningful intellectual contributions to our fields. This means that outreach might be viewed by our mentors as a waste of time or indulgent.

We did have a great discussion -- the last one of the year and for this workshop series! But it's not over, and we know we left the room with more questions than answers.


Are any of the readers of this blog involved in communities outside the university campus? What are these communities? Has your involvement helped enrich your teaching, research, or general state of being? Has your involvement posed challenges to these? And the ubiquitous questions everyone asks: how do you find the time?

One thing we know is, now that it's summer and you have the time to read this blog... surely you have time to contribute! Let us know, whether you attended the workshop series or not!