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Article
Serving the Community Through Discipline-Specific Consulting
Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement
  • Nilupa S. Gunaratna
  • Gayla R. Olbricht, Missouri University of Science and Technology
  • Alexander E. Lipka
  • Amy E. Watkins
  • Patricia Y. Yoshida
Abstract

Discipline-specific consulting has a critical place in any university as a form of community outreach. For example, when government and nonprofit organizations need objective information for decision making, a university-driven consulting program providing free services can fulfill their needs. We show how this can be accomplished by describing a project completed by Statistics in the Community (Statcom), a graduate student–run organization at Purdue University. Statcom helped the city of West Lafayette, Indiana, develop and analyze the results of two community surveys. We use this as a case study to illustrate the multiple benefits of implementing such an engagement opportunity at any university and argue that discipline-specific consulting should play a major role in university outreach. This case study also illustrates how students can be utilized to fulfill a university’s engagement mission.

Department(s)
Mathematics and Statistics
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2007 University of Georgia, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
1-1-2007
Publication Date
01 Jan 2007
Citation Information
Nilupa S. Gunaratna, Gayla R. Olbricht, Alexander E. Lipka, Amy E. Watkins, et al.. "Serving the Community Through Discipline-Specific Consulting" Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement Vol. 11 Iss. 4 (2007) p. 99 - 109
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/gayla-olbricht/34/