OHIO announces call for proposals for 2025 Community and Place-Based Engagement Symposium

OHIO community members speak together while gathered around a table at the Community Engagement Symposium

The Ohio University Center for Community Engagement invites students, faculty, staff and community partners to submit proposals for the Engage OHIO 2025: Ohio University’s Community and Place-Based Engagement Symposium.

The symposium is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 24, 2025, at the Ohio University Inn and Conference Center.

This event merges institutional priorities around place-based education and community engagement, celebrating the power of university-community partnerships that advancing student learning and serving the public good.

The symposium will feature interactive sessions, panels and workshops that highlight innovative teaching, shared scholarship, and impactful community initiatives.

A Plenary and Community Engagement Awards Ceremony will be held the evening before, Thursday, Oct. 23, to honor outstanding contributions to engagement across the region.

Call for proposals

OHIO Community members speak together while standing on a path and the grass at the Bailey's Trail System park

The symposium welcomes proposals across five key themes:

Place-Based Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning Rooted in Community
This theme explores how educators bring local history, environment and culture into classrooms and co-curricular experiences. Proposals may highlight course-based engagement, community-immersive assignments, place-based program design or student learning outcomes.
Partnerships in Practice: Building Ethical, Reciprocal Collaboration
This theme focuses on strategies for forming, sustaining and evaluating university-community partnerships. Proposals might address partnership structures, co-design processes, communication tools, or practices that center mutual benefit and trust.
Community Capacity and Resilience: Tools for Nonprofit and Public Sector Partners
Designed with community collaborators in mind, this theme supports organizational development, partnership navigation, student supervision, grant opportunities and leveraging university resources to advance community priorities.
Community-Engaged Research and Scholarship
This theme highlights collaborative research and creative activity that centers community knowledge and needs. Topics may include co-authorship, data equity, public scholarship, participatory design, or impact measurement.
Curricular and Experiential Engagement for Student Success
This theme focuses on academic and co-curricular approaches to service learning, civic learning and experiential education that deepen student learning while addressing real-world challenges in local contexts

"The Community and Placed Based Engagement Symposium brings together educators and community partners to share practices that are rooted in the strengths, histories and priorities of our local communities,” said Mary Nally, director of the Center for Community Engagement. “It’s a space where faculty can showcase innovative teaching and scholarship while also providing community organizations with tools and connections to strengthen their missions. At its heart, this event honors the power of collaboration and place in shaping more equitable, responsive and resilient communities."