The Self-Study team first devoted attention to defining the concepts of “engagement and service” and then sought to operationalize them. An important resource in this early analysis was the set of seven guiding characteristics of an engaged university (Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities). This resource helped to define some of the topical areas or campus qualities which the Self-Study process might address. Those features chosen for review are responsiveness, respect for partners, accessibility, coordination, and resource partnerships.

In addition, the team examined the sources of evidence for engagement and service commitment outlined in the Holland Matrix. These discussions led to the decision to examine the presence and role of engagement and service in:

• UWM’s mission
• Promotion, tenure, merit, and hiring at UWM
• Organizational structures to support engagement and service
• Student, faculty, and staff involvement in engagement and service activities
• Community involvement in engagement partnerships
• The treatment of engagement and service in campus publications

Evidence concerning the core components of engagement and service criterion as defined through NCA Self-Study guidelines is everywhere at UWM. Engagement and service at UWM occur at all levels of the campus: individual faculty, students, and staff members; programs, departments, centers, schools and colleges; and the University as an institution. This Self-Study document does not pretend to be a complete documentation of all the many and varied types of engagement and service activities involving UWM faculty, staff, and students. The Self-Study provides a number of examples, but is not an exhaustive catalog.

Ideally, the Self-Study team could make reference to an existing document, or an office, or series of easily accessible databases that provide such a catalog, but engagement and service as a topic of institutional analysis is a relative novelty at UWM. This is not to suggest that engagement and service are novel activities at UWM, only that their scrutiny and evaluation are relatively new enterprises. In fact, the University has a long history of participating in engagement and service activities. The Milwaukee Idea represents a set of contemporary and important campus commitments to engagement and service at UWM, but many such activities predated and/or occur outside the formal systems of the Milwaukee Idea, as well. There is little doubt that UWM can consider itself a vibrantly engaged university that responsively serves its constituencies in valued ways. The challenge lies in demonstrating this, and in analyzing possible means of improving it at UWM.

Evidence to support the Self-Study has been gathered through varied means, including, environmental scanning efforts (e.g., mission statements and strategic planning documents, promotion criteria documents, bulletin and course descriptions for students, news and website announcements, promotional materials); reports from the campus Black and Gold Commission and school-level Black and Gold teams; survey responses from Deans, Program Chairs, Administrators, and Center leaders; graduate school records of grants and contracts; and materials related to the Milwaukee Idea—UWM’s most highly visible, coordinated, and clearly documented engagement enterprise in recent years.