The DukeEngage team’s effort was honored last week at the annual Blue Ribbon Award Luncheon.  The event honors Duke faculty and staff who have either worked as a team on a major university initiative or has contributed to the promotion of diversity at Duke.  (Click here for the other winners.)

In receiving the Teamwork Award, DukeEngage Director Eric Mlyn said the team was challenged by the short-time frame in which it had to work.

Fast forward two years, to when Duke’s new strategic plan was approved.  One of the document’s top goals was empowering students “to become more engaged with their own educations.”

“Even before dust began to settle on the strategic plan, Provost Peter Lange asked me to convene a group to develop a plan that would make that happen,” Mlyn said.  “His charge to us was to ‘think big,’ and in fact for a long time the project was known simply as ‘The Big Idea.’”

Mlyn collected a team of faculty and staff involved in student engagement projects across the university.  Rather than start from scratch, Mlyn said the team built upon ongoing efforts such as Study Abroad, the Hart Leadership Program and the Community Service Center, as well as individual initiatives involving faculty and students.

The team had two main charges: Develop a pilot program for DukeEngage to run in summer 2007, and organize the Duke Center for Civic Engagement (DCCE) that would oversee DukeEngage and serve as an umbrella organization coordinating all Duke student enrichment programs.

The goal is that within five years, one quarter of all Duke students will participate in these programs.

Early on, one important decision was that DukeEngage and DCCE should not undermine the existing enrichment programs.

“The strategy was not to overshadow those programs, but to partner with them to ensure that we are taking advantage of existing knowledge and expertise,” Mlyn said.  “The DCCE is an umbrella organization, and we’re still not sure what that means, so we still have work to do.  But in general we are building joint programs with groups such as Hart Leadership and Study Abroad that I think will benefit everyone involved.”

The work came down to one last giant push to get the final proposal to Lange.  In a marathon session, team members finished the proposal, fueled in part by a lot of coffee and Christmas cookies baked by Elaine Madison, director of Duke’s Community Service Center.

Once the proposal was approved, there was more work to be done.  Mlyn said organizers expected to have 50 students participate in last summer’s pilot project.  In fact, DukeEngage accepted 87 students.

“If we had accepted every proposal, we would have placed about 150 students,” he said.  “It was a good experience for us.  This summer, we want to place 300 students.”

And work continues in fleshing out the role and responsibilities of the DCCE, Mlyn said.  “We’re proud of this award, but the work is far from done.  We have a lot of strategic thinking still to do for what DCCE will do.  We have questions about whether we should be an intellectual home for faculty members involved in civic engagement.  Do we want to play a role on campus for bringing faculty and students together to talk about civic engagement?”

Provost Peter Lange is already certain that the DukeEngage team has accomplished much in putting civic engagement at the core of the undergraduate experience.

“The committee completed their proposal on time and with spectacular results,” Lange said in nominating the team. “This initiative has already energized faculty and students to examine anew the connection of the classroom experience to the solution of society’s most pressing needs.”