Dissemination of community engagement in engineering and computing

Community engagement is a pedagogy that integrates engagement with a community, local or global, with academic content. In engineering and computer science the engagement is often the design, delivery and support of projects for NGO\´s, human service agencies, educational institutions and governmental agencies. Community engagement has been supported in the literature for enhancing learning and motivation. It has been shown to influence retention and interest in engineering and computing, in particular among underrepresented population. Community engagement has been classified in the U.S. under a broader umbrella as "Learning Through Service" (LTS) experiences, which encompass a broad set of engagement activities with a goal of achieving academic learning outcomes that range from volunteerism to service-learning. One successful LTS model is the EPICS program, which has been implemented in over 30 universities. Most programs have been successful, however, some have not. Using a framework of complex change, this paper describes how the program has been institutionalized at the original university and the approaches used to disseminate the model to other institutions to identify key elements of program dissemination.