| Summary: | In Nigeria, the government has invested in higher education with the intention of
promoting human capacity development, particularly in public universities. So far,
there has been no serious correction awareness aimed at addressing and promoting
human resource development initiative through community engagement practices in
Nigeria, especially in academic settings. Past research indicates that faculty members
are not consistent in advancing the communities through exploration and mobilization
of community resources, in facilitating and enhancing the skills, knowledge and
attitude needed for learning, and career advancement, organizational development,
and community development. This thesis examined the university community
engagement among professors’ in Nigeria; inform by a qualitative case-study research
approach. The study explored the career experiences of nine professors’ community
engagement participation from nine academic departments in a Nigerian University.
Qualitative methods were used; including in-depth, semi-structured interviewing
interviews, direct observations, documentary analysis, literature review and consistent
field notes.
The study point to several potential strategies for making community engagement
more sustainable, including incorporating community engagement into university
policies, providing a more supportive institutional culture, facilitating engagement
through reward and recognition of engaging academics, conducting continuous
research into community problems, and encouraging engagement based on academics
area of specialization. Also, the study provided empirical evidence of key factors that
led to the professors’ community engagement participation at different stages in their
career such as; organizational structure and incentives, upbringing and orientation,
desire to change and impact people’s live, and personal satisfaction. More so, the
study reveal the challenges and opportunities toward functional community engagement in academia. In addition, findings reveal the professors’ experience in
regard to processes of their community engagement services in compliance with the
institution philosophy as “the University for Community Development”.
The understanding obtained regarding the career experience of professors’ community
engagement in a Nigerian University envisages a number of recommendations to
policy makers, practitioners, university management and faculty members to visualize
sustaining community engagement and determined the needed interventions in
implementing them. More importantly, this study revealed a number of theoretical and
managerial implications for human resource development, in terms of knowledge
generated on professors’ community engagement practices in Nigeria and the
methodological insight used in deriving such knowledge, while suggesting directions
for future research.
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