The evolution and revolution in UKM's social responsibility policy, organization and arrangements towards encouraging sustainable university community engagement programs
Ismail Bahari (Universiti Kebangsaan Malayia)
Abstract
Community or civic engagement programs carried out by universities are sometimes regarded as the university’s responsibility to give or pay back to society. The mode of “paying or giving back” to society varies according to the operational definition of community or civic engagement and consequently the university’s policy on university community responsibility. However, the ultimate goal of such engagement is to imbue a university community with a soul. For many universities carrying out such noble community or civic engagement programs is not an issue because such programs are usually ad hoc, charity oriented, one-off, and carried out by voluntary individuals and groups within the university. Unfortunately such arrangements are well suited for short-term community focused programs but are not structured to support sustainable programs required especially to improve the socio-economic, education as well as health of the target community. Sustainability of community engagement program is dependent on many factors. Such factors may be classified as the “pulling factors and the pushing factors”. The pulling factors refer to the needs of the community while the pushing factors refer to the resources and support from the university and the third party for the implementation such program. A program or project will be sustainable if the community participates in it because they needed it and benefits from its implementation rather than being forced to accept it. For a land grant university like Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), the pushing factors are the pertinent determining factors in ensuring the sustainability of its community engagement programs. For UKM the pushing factor starts with the university social responsibility’s (USR) policy, i.e. the way it perceives USR as a partnership, an investment and a service to enable and ennoble individuals to enrich the community and the university. The establishment of a dedicated Office of University-Community Partnerships under the portfolio of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Industry and Community Partnerships together with the operational organizational changes at the faculty levels are revolutionary organizational changes that has helped initiate, facilitate and consolidate university-community focused initiatives. The setting up of the OUCP and Deputy Deans (Community Services) also allow the formalization of arrangements by which the university, faculty, institutes and centers can carry out its social responsibilities to achieve the set USR policy. This paper discusses in detail the evolution as well as the revolutionary changes in UKM’s USR policy, organization and arrangements towards enhancing its sustainable social responsibility programs.
