April 22, 2020
Procter steps down as director of K-State's Center For Engagement and Community Development
Submitted by Communications and Marketing
After 14 years of administering and managing K-State's Center for Engagement and Community Development, David Procter will step down as director at the end of June.
"I so appreciate the leadership of David Procter as the inaugural director of CECD in advancing our K-State land-grant mission of community engagement across a wide range of issues and initiatives," said Provost Chuck Taber. "David's role in securing initial designation and the recent reclassification as a community-engaged institution from the Carnegie Foundation is incredibly important for our university."
Procter was hired as CECD's inaugural director when that unit was launched in 2006 by then Provost Duane Nellis and Director of Extension and Dean of Agriculture Fred Cholick. Procter and CECD were tasked to coordinate university work related to its engagement mission including leading and facilitating campus/community partnerships, providing leadership in institutional engagement reporting, benchmarking campus engagement, promoting the scholarship of engagement, advocating for engagement recognition and celebrating campus engagement.
Highlights from Procter's term as director include achieving K-State's initial classification as a community-engaged institution from the Carnegie Foundation in 2010 and then securing reclassification of that designation in 2020. K-State was the first Kansas university to receive this engagement designation. In 2013, Procter developed and administered the Engagement Benchmarking Tool, or EBT, to help understand the breadth and scope of engagement among K-State's faculty and staff. The EBT provided critical information for securing the Carnegie Foundation's reclassification. Since its founding, CECD has attracted more than $4 million in extramural grants and contracts, and these funds have been used to recognize and underwrite campus/community partnerships ranging from rural food access, to civic education, to climate change, to affordable housing, to rural economic development, to Kansas arts and humanities. CECD has worked to promote the scholarship of engagement by hosting an annual engagement symposium, organizing the Civic Engagement Fellows program, and administering the Engagement Incentive Grant program. Since launching the Engagement Incentive Grant Program, CECD and the Office of the Provost have provided nearly $700,000 to 65 community-engaged projects.
Procter and CECD have also advocated for rewarding faculty and staff for engaged scholarship and worked with departments seeking to revise their tenure and promotion documents to include recognition of engaged work. K-State's reclassification application to the Carnegie Foundation for its community-engaged institution designation revealed that 51% of all university departments now recognize engagement in some way in their tenure and promotion policy documents. Procter and CECD have also worked to highlight and celebrate engaged scholarship by annually submitting the best of K-State engagement to national award competitions. A noteworthy success of these efforts occurred in 2018 when K-State's Rural Grocery Initiative was awarded the Exemplary Engagement Project award from the National Engagement Scholarship Consortium.
Through his work with CECD, Procter has had the opportunity to chair the advisory board for the Kansas Healthy Food Initiative, serve as conferences chair for the executive board of the National Engagement Scholarship Consortium, and serve as a member of the advisory boards for the Healthy Food Policy Project, the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, and the Knowledge-Based Economic Development partner team. Procter has also served on the board of directors of the National Issues Forums Institute, the executive committee of the Council on Engagement and Outreach for the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and on the advisory boards for the Kansas Humanities Council and K-State's Commercialization Leadership Council.
"It has been my honor to help advance K-State's historic land-grant engagement mission," Procter said. "I have enjoyed very much working with the amazing staff and students of the Center for Engagement and Community Development and with K-State's dedicated campus faculty, staff and Extension professionals to help connect the vast resources of Kansas State University with the significant issues of public need facing Kansans and communities worldwide."
Procter will be returning to K-State's communication studies faculty to teach courses in deliberative democracy as well as continuing his work to strengthen rural grocery stores and increase Kansans' access to healthy foods.