More about CUE East
The purpose of the Beacons initiative is to change the culture of universities and not to fund more university-community engagement, though CUE East is doing that too (see Awards and Funding from CUE East). This is a challenging concept for UEA staff and students and for the public alike.

CUE East Logic Model 2010

The ‘research-driven culture’  at UEA, including pressure to publish, attract funding for & build careers on ‘hard research’ means that public & community engagement is not a priority.  It is also seen as not well regarded by peers, and is difficult to undertake as, unlike enterprise, it does not bring in significant funding.

The 'Logic Model' provides a summary of the programme priorities, assumptions, risk factors and outcomes; click here to download a copy (if you want to print this out, it is best viewed in A3 format).

CUE East is aiming to achieve the following outcomes by the end of 2011 -

‘Authentic & Sustained Culture Change’

• A clear UEA mandate for public & community engagement that is understood and embraced by staff and students at all levels and who have the right skills, knowledge & confidence to be engaged
• A culture at UEA where public & community engagement is encouraged, tracked, evaluated & rewarded
• ‘Ownership’ of UEA as ‘our university’ by the local community in Norwich & Norfolk
• CUE East is no longer a ‘project’ but fully integrated into UEA’s engagement infrastructure, connecting with internal and external stakeholders alike
• A greater stake for the public in academic enterprise, and the sharing of research excellence which can be as important as the research itself

Baseline Research – what is the current culture at UEA?

The importance of public engagement
 
“It’s difficult to say because it almost comes into a different category because it is not part of my job description or one of the measures against which I think I will ever be measured…it’s more like deciding do I want to go for a run today?  It’s something I enjoy and it’s important but I don’t really see it as a part of my paid job” (Senior Researcher at UEA)

Recording public engagement

 “Nobody knows whether it counts towards their work time, so it dissuades people from doing it or telling people they are doing it because they might be called upon to fill up those hours somewhere else” (Researcher at UEA)

As a part of our plans to establish a baseline we commissioned a qualitative survey, conducted by Lisa McDaid, the Beacons Researcher employed by City College Norwich (Lisa was the CUE East evaluator until early 2010).  The above quotes are from this research.  The overall goal of the research was to explore academic attitudes towards public engagement and the cultural and institutional factors that affected their involvement. We wanted a baseline against which we could assess the change that we were trying to bring out in institutional culture.  Click here to download a copy of the report.

McDaid, L. (2008) A qualitative baseline report on the perceptions of public engagement in University of East Anglia academic staff. Report No. RS7408, The Research Centre, CCN, Norwich

The key findings can be found on page 6 of the report and are illustrated in the table below alongside the relevant CUE East and UEA strategies.  PE means ‘public engagement’.