Social Embeddedness Report

Often times, our office must communicate with internal and external stakeholders about the efforts ASU has taken to operationalize the charter and design aspirations. Such assignments to do so can be both rewarding and frustrating. With thousands of students, faculty staff and community partners across five campuses, there is no shortage of programs and initiatives that can be featured. One of best aspects of my role is learning about these efforts and how they have made a positive impact. It’s inspiring and reinforces one of the main reasons why I came back to work for such mission-driven organization. However, with limited real estate on a one pager or presentation as well as the constraint of quick deadlines, it is frustrating to know that it is not always possible to highlight every story.

One of the best examples of this type of work is the annual social embeddedness report. My colleagues, Alex, Lindsey and Regina, collaborate to curate, design and publish a report that seeks to accomplish many goals including:

• Illuminate how we operationalize the design aspiration
• Accurately convey the complexity and work required to forge mutually beneficial partnerships between community partners and the university
• Provoke questions and feedback that can be used to inform how we can improve the collateral as well as how ASU can continue to enable all of its students, faculty and staff to integrate social embeddedness in their work

Lindsey, the Director of Social Embeddedness, has the herculean task of establishing and maintaining relationships with individuals across the university to keep a pulse on all things social embeddedness. Alex, Regina and I work with Lindsey to identify which stories to feature and how to best share them. All of the stories must be communicated in the limited space of 20 double page spreads or so where every single word, photo and design element must be maximized.

This year, we have been fortunate enough to work with many internal partners such as the Marketing Hub to refine our practices and final product. As Lindsey expands the Social Embeddedness Network with brown bag luncheons, e-newsletter and annual conferences, our team also looks forward to having more opportunities to share the stories that may not have made it into the annual report. The 2018 Social Embeddedness Report can be found at the Community@ASU website.