Karen S. Bruns
Ohio State University
Assistant Director, Family and Consumer Sciences and Leader
Biographical Abstracts
Karen Bruns is a grounded servant leader of community engagement scholarship and is a major leader strengthening the movement. She consistently and courageously endorses and models community engagement scholarship across the structural silos of higher education and within communities. Her team successes provide the foundation for ACES.
Notable Achievements
Dr. Karen Bruns community engagement scholarship achievements in Ohio and nationally are outlined in her CV, however, there are two notable examples benchmarking her success.
Implementation of C. Peter Magrath University Community Engagement Award — Working with the Outreach Scholarship conference planning committee, Dr. Bruns provided leadership to develop a concept paper establishing a national award recognizing university-community engagement. Once the concept was developed, it was presented to the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC). Karen then worked with NASULGC (APLU) and a team from the Outreach Scholarship Partnership to develop the call for award proposals and the process for recognition of this national award. Since the awards inception in 2006 until 2011, Dr. Bruns worked closely in partnership with NASULGC to implement the award and serve as the link between the two sponsors of the award, NASULGC and the Outreach Scholarship Partnership.
Outreach Scholarship Conference — In 1999, Pennsylvania State University held a conference on Outreach Scholarship which resulted in discussions to allow faculty to share their scholarship related to engagement. At the 1999 conference, Dr. Bruns made contact with the conference leadership to express interest in partnering on future conferences. This resulted in the formation of the Outreach Scholarship Partnership that included Pennsylvania State University, University of Wisconsin-Extension, and Ohio State University. Since then this partnership has grown into the Engagement Scholarship Consortium.