Center Priorities

The Center for a New Washington will affirm and convene community participatory research.

We assert that Heritage University has the intellectual grounding, geographical perspective, and the reputation for visionary leadership to understand, articulate, and respond to community priorities. Our commitment to the community where we work and live extends beyond providing excellent education to our students. We have the ability and the will to lead the way in articulating and responding to crucial issues. To this end, the center will act as an advocate and accompanist to faculty engaged in research that responds to community priorities.

In all of our research activities, we will be responsive to priorities defined by the community. In order to build lasting partnerships with businesses, community-based organizations, schools, the Yakama nation, local governments and other stakeholders, we will use participatory action methodology to identify community priorities. We will affirm faculty projects that are community-centered and in alignment with community-identified priorities. We will also lead original, innovative community participatory research projects.

The Center for a New Washington will convene community forums.

We acknowledge that high quality intellectual discourse requires collaboration. In addition to engaging in and supporting high quality research, the Center for a New Washington will invite cutting-edge leaders and scholars with perspectives relevant to our context to engage in meaningful dialogue with our community. The purpose of these forums will be to engage the brightest minds in thinking through issues that matter to our community. These forums will range from public lectures to targeted work sessions aimed at producing a work product.

The Center aims to cultivate and promote the original work of Heritage University responding to community challenges. To this end, we will publish frequent articles and updates, promote our work in community newsletters, websites, and others local media outlets, publicize faculty publications, archive and publicly display community forums and produce original journal articles for publication.