Bojana Ćulum Ilić: Advancing community engagement
No university is an island. Every higher education institution sits within a dense network of local actors, such as public administrations, industry, media, cultural institutions, NGOs and civil society. To each of them, universities have a lot to offer – support, knowledge, expertise, and even inspiration – to help them create sustainable, equitable and inclusive economies and democracies. Proactively engaging and serving the local community, universities can be drivers of positive societal change.
In the new episode of the EAIE podcast series, we are joined in conversation by Bojana Ćulum Ilić, Associate Professor at the University of Rijeka. In our conversation, Prof Ilić shares her insights on how to embed community engagement in education and research, how staff and students can contribute, what benefits universities can receive from becoming engaged, and much more.
About Bojana Ćulum Ilić
Bojana Ćulum Ilić is Associate Professor at the Department of Education of the University of Rijeka (UNIRi) in Croatia. Her research focuses on the engaged university, engaged teaching and learning pedagogy, and youth civic education. She is also involved in drafting UNIRi’s policies on service-learning and community-based engagement, and is widely involved in European projects on university community engagement and service-learning development. She is the current Director of the University of Rijeka Foundation, and serves as a member of the National Council for Youth Work.
Further reading
For further insights into the topics touched on in this episode, the following resources may be of interest:
→ Share your service learning experience in response to COVID-19 (European Observatory of Service-Learning in Higher Education)
→ Towards a European Framework for Community Engagement in Higher Education (TEFCE)
→ Latin American Center for Service-Learning (CLAYSS)
→Croatia: leading community engagement efforts at EU level (EAIE blog)
