Friends,

1. This forum was the best one that I have seen so far on this topic.  Noted that there are 15,000 higher education institutions.  Not only is there an obsession over the top 100 (my university would say top 200 as it falls within that range), but, what in fact is being ranked ? what does this tell us about the roles played and the potential for higher education to make a critical contribution to issues of citizen engagement, community based economies, social and political inclusion, sustainability, cognitive justice and knowledge democracy?

For those of us concerned with community university research and engagement, with social justice and with social and other responsibilities of higher education, what strategic studies, seminars, advocacy should we be undertaking?

2. I also attach a quite nice brief conceptual note by Prof. John Lutz from the University of Victoria, a nationally honoured historian who has been looking after the UVic Office of Community Based Research during this past year.  It makes the links between University and Community quite elegantly.

3. Crystal Tremblay, a Doctoral student at UVic, will be the GACER rep at the Talloires event in Madrid in June and will be posting blogs on the GACER Group facebook site.  If you have not signed on to that, please do so and post information about your events and networks. Chris Duke from PASCAL and Yazmin Cruz from GUNI will also be there...Any others of you?

4. David Watson will be the keynote speaker at the Australian University Community Engagement Association annual meeting in July.  Henk Mulder and Norbert Steinhaus, from the Living Knowledge Network will also be the GACER reps at the even

Tomorrow, I leave Istanbul to return to Victoria, BC, Canada.  I have a busy June of meeting our first grandbaby, celebrating the wedding of our older son and some conferences and re-claiming our home after a year of being away

I will be returning to a new role as Professor of Community Development within the School of Public Administration but will of course continue my work with GACER.

Cheers,

Budd