By Munyaradzi Makoni. Stellenbosch University’s Innovus initiative – which is responsible for technology transfer, entrepreneurial support and development among students – is providing a platform for community and industry through entrepreneurial grooming.
The on-campus LaunchLab is a mixed-use business accelerator that provides emerging entrepreneurs with infrastructure including affordable rental, network services and guidance from academics and business leaders, to help them launch business ideas. Read more...

By Ard Jongsma. Does a university always need students as intermediaries or vectors for community action? No, a very successful programme at Glasgow University has been proving the opposite since 2002. Instead of sending students out into the community, they made the community the students. Read more...

By Rebecca Warden. Civic engagement is all about equal partnerships between universities and the communities they serve. So when representatives of Lahore University of Management Sciences, or LUMS, went to work with a small female-run cottage industry in a remote corner of Pakistan last September, they were expecting to have plenty of input from the women involved. Read more...

By Rebecca Warden. Universities around the world are adopting very different approaches to how they serve their communities. Tales of three universities told at the Talloires Network conference near Cape Town from 2-4 December are living proof of this diversity. Read more...

By Munyaradzi Makoni. The Association of Commonwealth Universities launched a new initiative, the ACU Engage Community, at the Talloires Network Leaders Conference 2014. The platform will provide a forum to disseminate knowledge and project management skills among practitioners and share news about opportunities in community engagement.
The ACU Engage Community initiative builds on the success of the ongoing ‘World Beyond 2015 – Is higher education ready?’ campaign and the ACU’s University Extension Network. Read more...

By Munyaradzi Makoni. Structures to facilitate research partnerships globally have been in existence for up to 150 years, but there is an uneven spread of models across a wider range of higher education institutions as new partnerships have emerged in recent years, a comparative study to identify challenges and propose solutions has revealed. Read more...

By Karen MacGregor. The importance of long-term planning and investment in higher education were stressed by major funders of university civic engagement – the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Santander Bank – in a session on “Strategies for Generating Financial Resources” at the Talloires Network 2014 conference. Read more...

By François van Schalkwyk. African research that forms part of the Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa – HERANA – project has developed indicators to measure university-community engagement projects, to ascertain whether their activities are connected to the strategy of the institution, are linked to external constituents in a sustainable manner, feed into teaching and generate new knowledge. Read more...

By Rebecca Warden. The number of academics who step outside the ivory tower to engage with the community is growing and universities are using a variety of ways to compensate them for doing so. But institutions that recognise and reward this effort are still very much a minority and the reasons why they find it hard to do are complex. Read more...

The Talloires Network University Volunteer Program, in partnership with Universidad Autónoma de Madrid – UAM – in Portugal and funded by the Santander Group, is a major international student engagement initiative. Read more...