Communications and Community Engagement

Communications and Community Engagement (CCE) builds collaborative relationships with various units across campus and provides opportunities for partners to work towards creating a just and inclusive campus and society.

Communications

Gallaudet is a highly diverse community, with people from all over the world and from all walks of life. Communicating in a culturally appropriate way can be challenging, whether it’s in English or in ASL. Understanding your audience will go a long way toward knowing how to write or sign in an inclusive way, creating language that is welcoming and encourages belonging.

The Manager of CCE oversees all communications from the Office of Belonging and Engagement (BE), including community wide letters, website, social media and MyGU accounts, and marketing materials. All these things involve content development, writing, editing, photography, videography and design.  CCE’s communications goals are:

1. To communicate internally and externally about BE’s work: learning opportunities, events, programs and more.
2. To develop written and ASL educational materials.
3. To share resources to all stakeholders, including alumni and the community outside of Gallaudet.
4. To consult on culturally relevant communications strategies.

Community Engagement

BE defines community engagement as the effort to bring people together to build collaborative efforts in achieving the University’s goal of achieving belonging for all communities. What would community engagement look like here at Gallaudet?

Note: “We” means each one of us. Everyone.

• We consider all possible perspectives. Everyone has a unique story. When we better understand our communities, we can collaborate to address their well-being.
• We are intentional in our interactions and build on our collective understanding.
• We keep each other accountable through reflection and continuous learning.
• We build long-term, sustainable relationships that allow for collaborative efforts to create meaningful solutions to complex problems.
• We mobilize resources and influence systems.
• We become a catalyst for transformative work.

CCE also strives to participate in national, local and community outreach activities that supports our mission

Examples for this work:  

• Community conversations about current events that impact our students, staff and faculty in meaningful ways. Pluralism allows us to discuss opposing points of view in a civil discourse. Current events are a great way to have these discussions.
• Bringing together communities to make sound decisions – One example is our efforts to bring the Indigenous community together to rename Building 103, and to organize a healing ceremony for the Indigenous community.