PEARL Follow-up survey into attitudes to public engagement

PEARL, headed up by Carenza Lewis (Professor for the Public Understanding of Research), is running a follow up survey into attitudes amongst University of Lincoln staff and students to public engagement, and need your help by taking a few minutes to complete this survey at https://unioflincoln.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_26lppQ2oqgPozul.

Thank you to all that have helped by completing this survey so far. We would like to gain as many opinions as possible, and as such the deadline has been extended to 29th November 2019.As you may be aware, in 2017 the University of Lincoln secured two years UKRI funding to enhance its support for public engagement with research.

UKRI values public engagement which makes university research more accessible, relevant and valuable because sharing knowledge, enriching lives, supporting communities and strengthening places and all help wider society, while universities become better known, more beneficial and better connected. For all these reasons, public engagement is vital for any modern university.

The UKRI funding enabled the establishment of PEARL (Public Engagement for All with Research at Lincoln) which over the last two years, has aimed to support public engagement through a range of initiatives including:

• • • a new CPD training programme for staff and students
    • a system of annual grants to fund new activity;
    • a new website (https://pearl.lincoln.ac.uk);
    • new social media feeds (eg Twitter @unilincolnPEARL);
    • staff profile tabs to make public engagement opportunities more visible;
    • a new annual report ‘Discover’ showcasing publicly engaged research from Lincoln (https://pearl.lincoln.ac.uk/discover-issue-1);
    • embedded public engagement within staff appraisals;•run the first two annual staff conferences to share inspirational successes;
    • new Vice Chancellor’s Awards for public engagement so that excellence can be rewarded.

As result, the university is now participating in national public engagement initiatives such as Pint of Science and Being Human as well as offering an increasing number and range of local activities, all of which can be shown to benefit increasingly diverse communities.One of PEARL’s first actions in 2017 was to carry out a survey exploring what staff and students thought about the University’s provision for public engagement with research.

Now the UKRI funded period is ending, we are repeating the 2017 survey to see how attitudes have been affected and what should be focussed on next. Accordingly, do please complete the survey, by 29th November 2019, at this link: https://unioflincoln.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_26lppQ2oqgPozul. Thank you for your help – your participation in this survey will make a direct difference to the university’s capacity to benefit wider society, research and researchers.