CREA+ Community Engagement and Environmental Integration

Context

Community engagement (CE) is an essential function of higher education institutions in Chile, required by accreditation standards and central to ensuring that technical-professional training responds to the real needs of local communities. Duoc UC, one of the country's leading technical-professional institutions with a presence across multiple regions, has been formalizing its CE policy as part of its institutional commitment to the development of the environments where it operates. In this context, the institution identified the need for a practical guide to help its teams implement this policy consistently and adapted to each campus.

Challenge

Despite having an institutional CE policy, Duoc UC faced concrete implementation challenges: territorial engagement varied significantly between campuses, student participation in CE initiatives was uneven, there were coordination gaps between schools and directorates, and impact evaluation mechanisms were insufficient. What was missing was an instrument that would translate institutional guidelines into concrete, replicable, and adaptable tools for the diverse territorial contexts in which the institution operates.

Approach & Methodology

The guide was developed by UNIT in collaboration with Duoc UC's Directorate of Institutional Engagement and Integration through a co-design process conducted between July 2023 and March 2024. The process engaged more than 100 people from all schools and campuses through participatory workshops, interviews, and validation sessions. The methodology was structured around the CREA+ model — a four-phase framework: Connect (territorial diagnosis and governance), Implement (initiative design and execution), Evaluate (measuring results and impact), and Learn (systematisation and continuous improvement).

Key Findings & Results

The playbook produces a comprehensive tool system organised around the four CREA+ phases. The Connect phase includes instruments for forming coordinating teams, characterising the territorial environment, mapping entities, and defining boundaries of action. The Implement, Evaluate, and Learn phases provide planning sheets, evaluation matrices, systematisation templates, and institutional learning guides. The document also integrates the fundamental concepts of Chile's technical-professional regulatory framework and Duoc UC's CE policy.

Significance & Implications

This guide represents a pioneering case in applying service design to community engagement management in Latin American technical-professional education. Its modular, co-designed approach offers a transferable model for other educational institutions seeking to strengthen their relationship with the territories and communities where they operate.

Key Takeaways

1. The CREA+ model organises community engagement into four phases — Connect, Implement, Evaluate, Learn — to guide the complete cycle of each territorial initiative.
2. A co-design process with more than 100 participants ensures that the tools respond to the diversity of contexts at each campus.
3. Characterising the territorial environment is a fundamental step in developing relevant CE initiatives with measurable impact.
4. Integrating the regulatory framework and institutional policy into practical tools ensures coherence between strategy and operations.
5. The modular structure of the playbook allows adaptation to different institutional scales and territorial contexts.