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The majority of UW teaching happens through UW courses, with instruction provided by UW faculty, but instruction is also provided by other staff members and in non-course settings with community-engaged activities. Generally, the activities below are funded by payments either coming from UW students paying tuition or students/participants paying fees, but UW programs may have supplemental funds from donations or other gifts to support educational activities:

• UW faculty designing and implementing community-engaged courses, transforming traditional course content.
• UW students with academic appointments and UW non-academic staff facilitating instruction and overseeing programs that connect UW students with community partners with hands-on learning.
• UW faculty and departments design educational programs, certifications, and degrees to meet the needs of non-traditional students in Washington, creating accessible opportunities for their career advancement through education.
• UW programs create classes and events designed as outreach and enrichment to the external UW community, such as summer and weekend camps and classes for underserved communities and youth.

UW faculty also personally interact with community engagement as part of their personal professional and scholarly practices. As scholarship is a part of faculty activities, the funding for this part of community engagement comes through compensated faculty appointments and payments to community partners from UW departments, when available.

Community-engaged scholarship is a valued part of the activities evaluated by UW departments as part of the tenure, promotion, and merit review process. Focusing on the outward sharing and growth of knowledge, scholarship is beyond having community engagement as a part of the coursework taught or subject matter studied by a faculty member.

Scholarship activities are built on reciprocity and trust in relationships between community partners and the faculty member. Community partners are compensated for their collaborations and faculty are guided to create their scholarly works so they are both of use to the community and are accessible to the community.

There are many examples and opportunities for community engaged scholarship. See the UW Community Engagement TPMR Toolkit for more faculty resources.

Some faculty may have community engagement as part of their teaching and research subject expertise, such as faculty working in public health, social work, public policy, or medicine. Here, community engagement happens through the services that are a part of the particular subject area. Scholarship goes beyond this type of service, so all faculty, regardless of their subject expertise, make their expertise useful and share the service to the community.

Some faculty may also participate in Service Agreements where their expertise is used for paid services to external community partners. Like with research, activities through Service Agreements do contribute to a faculty member’s scholarship activities, but many more scholarship activities do not exclusively rely on payments exchange for the community access faculty expertise and educational outreach.

In addition to the Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement, UW also is rated as an R1 university by Carnegie classification. An R1 rating means that UW is in the highest tier of universities participating in research activities, with high numbers of faculty and students participating in research, a supporting infrastructure and operational investment for research by the university, and a large volume output of discovery, innovations, and doctoral candidates. Funding for research comes from community partners directly supporting research through sponsored programs, gifts, partnerships, and payment for IP use. UW also indirectly funds research by providing the facilities and administrative support, which may not always be a part of sponsored program awards from community partners.

UW research is broad and far-reaching with focus and practice. Faculty and staff in all disciplines participate in research as a way to increase knowledge for the UW community, Washington, and the world.

UW research values investigations and the sharing of findings that are intentionally designed to be of use and to be used by the public, focusing on relationship building with community partners to make this sharing both valued and possible.

UW Intellectual Properties (IP) are made available to the public through licenses, with usage for fees, open-source, or at no or reduced cost for community partners during cooperative projects.

See ¸é±ð²õ±ð²¹°ù³¦³óÌý±Ê²¹²â³¾±ð²Ô³Ù resources for more information on community-engaged research and IP usage.

Community-Engaged Courses are designed to go beyond classroom instruction. Volunteering with community based organizations, students are prepared and guided through their coursework while providing responsive support for community needs.

UW students can participate in paid and unpaid internships with community partners that are not linked to UW courses but still receive support and mentorship from UW programs.

UW connects UW students and community partners for volunteer activities through Community Connect UW.

Community partners and UW programs providing scholarships and academic awards to support students’ community-engaged projects and special, enrichment activities.

In addition to direct payments to students to support community-engaged activities, UW programs can also reimburse students for participation expenses, such as mileage to travel to community partner worksites.

Community-Engaged Courses also include classroom components where seminars and guided reflection build student competencies through transformative partnerships and service.

Leadership minors are available to undergraduates at each UW campus, which includes focused coursework on community and civic engagement. All UW undergraduate students are also eligible to complete the Husky Leadership Certificate, which often includes community engagement as an opportunity for students to develop their leadership skills.

Capstone projects and student labs throughout UW campuses where students partner with community partners to develop business solutions and organizational analysis.

Community partners are regular special speakers and presenters throughout UW courses. UW programs compensate these community partners with honoraria and other payments for their expertise and enrichment to the student learning experience.

Student jobs at UW also have learning outcomes, though some may be less focused on developing expertise in a particular field of study and more focused on skill used in future professional settings. UW students eligible for work study are able to apply for positions where they will tutor and mentor K-12 students in partnering schools. The working UW students receive training and support for their work and the partnering schools receive additional one on one support and curricular enrichment for their students. 

While internships are not wages to compensate for work activities, some internships are paid through UW’s payroll system. These internships are generally not tied to any UW courses and the student is responsible for identifying and securing their internship. The UW program may assist with providing a list of regular community partners who provide community engagement focused internships and will also give interns guidance with relationship building and continuing to contribute to their local community in the future.

Only students with Social Security Numbers (SSN) are eligible for UW work authorization and can receive payments through UW payroll. While hiring may initially happen without an SSN (a preliminary step to show an international student has a job offer and can apply for an SSN), work and payments should not start until an SSN is obtained and entered into UW’s payroll system, Workday. Payments that go through payroll should be wages for work, where students are completing required tasks when, where, and how the supervising UW program directs these parts of the activity. Payments through payroll do not immediately impact need-based aid for a student at the time of payment, but these can impact future aid and taxable earnings for the current year.

Some payments for student activities will need to go through payroll, particularly if the student is already on payroll, instead of Accounts Payable options. If the paid activity is related to their existing position, then it may be possible to issue a one time payment. If the activity is unrelated, then the UW program supervising the activity will generally need to hire the student into a student hourly position in their organization to issue payment. UW programs should contact their unit’s HR staff for questions about the payment pathway. Hiring normally takes 1 to 2 weeks and payment will happen on the scheduled payroll cycle after the paid activities are approved, so about a month or so in total time. This situation normally happens in community-engaged activities when a student is a guest speaker or gives a presentation and the UW program wants to give an honorarium for the service. Honoraria cannot go to employees, so if the student is on payroll, the payment for the service will also need to go through payroll.

Stipends are payments to students that are supposed to off-set their living expenses while they are engaged in an academic activity. There are three different stipend payment pathways:

• Accounts Payable: Covered just below with the other Miscellaneous Payment situations. Uncommon with community engagement unless the receiver is from a community partner institution.
• Student Accounts: All UW students are able to receive payments through their student accounts while they are enrolled in courses, with a few exceptions and possible impacts:
  • International graduate students are not able to receive stipend payments but they are eligible for scholarships and fellowships (see below).
  • Students who are not enrolled in enough credits will receive reduced payments unless they receive a waiver beforehand.
  • If students are already receiving need-based aid, additional payments through their Student Account will reduce the aid amount since now the need is being met. The net support will remain unchanged for the student, but the new payment is not additional support. However, a student can still receive more aid than just their calculated unmet need and continue to receive payments until they reach the UW calculated cost of attendance. Payments over the cost of attendance are taxable. Tax reporting is more of an administrative burden and concern for students depending on their residency status, so UW programs should encourage students to contact Student Fiscal Services if they have questions about new payments impacting their existing awards.
  • Sponsored programs normally stipulate that student support is by scholarship and fellowship, but sometimes the payment can be through stipend without stipulations that the payment can only be used for tuition and fees. In this situation, UW programs will need to receive confirmation from Grants and Contract Accounting that their sponsored program/grant can be set up to pay out directly to the student or whatever is not spent on tuition and fees can be paid out. UW programs will need to provide this confirmation to Student Fiscal Services when setting up the worktags for Student Account authorization and disbursals. Otherwise, stipends paid off of sponsored programs/grants will be treated like scholarship/fellowship disbursals and will only pay for tuition and fees. 
• Payroll: Generally only used when the stipend includes benefits or administering through payroll allows for easier compliance checks, such as the receiving student needing to have a certain residency status as a condition of a sponsored program award. UW programs may also offer some stipends through payroll instead of only through student accounts since the stipend payment through payroll may not initially impact need-based aid for the student. However, aid may still be impacted later that year and all earnings over the cost of UW attendance are taxable, so students should be directed to contact Student Fiscal Services and the Student Aid Office for their UW campus to understand how any payment may impact their awards and existing student earning thresholds.

Scholarships, fellowships, and academic awards to enrolled UW students always go through their Student Accounts. All students can receive payments through their Student Account, but some students may have limits to their payment methods and amounts. When planning these payments, UW programs should consider the following:

• Scholarships and fellowships funding through sponsored programs/grants will generally only cover tuition and fees. This limitation to only pay these expenses in the Student Account is selected by the UW program when setting-up the worktags for payment authorization and disbursal with Student Fiscal Services.
• UW programs should review restrictions on scholarships and see if any are appropriate to be lifted based on donor restrictions or current program needs. For example, a donor may not have stipulated that only a student with a specific major and GPA receives a scholarship with their donated funds, or that the scholarship can only pay for tuition instead of paying directly to the student for any academic need. Even though there are not original stipulations, a scholarship may have been set up to only pay students who meet those criteria or only cover certain expenses. UW programs can review award restrictions to see if they match the original criteria given for the donated funds and revise any restrictions which limit the use or equity needs for current awarding.
• Students who are not enrolled in enough credits will receive reduced payments unless they receive a waiver beforehand.
• If students are already receiving need-based aid, additional payments through their Student Account will reduce the aid amount since now the need is being met. The net support will remain unchanged for the student, but the new payment is not additional support. However, a student can still receive more aid than just their calculated unmet need and continue to receive payments until they reach the UW calculated cost of attendance. Payments over the cost of attendance are taxable. Tax reporting is more of an administrative burden and concern for students depending on their residency status, so UW programs should encourage students to contact Student Fiscal Services if they have questions about new payments impacting their existing awards.

Some payments to students can go through Miscellaneous Payments or through the Accounts Payable pathways for UW Supplier Invoice payments. There are some occasions when these are either the only allowable options or an alternate payment opportunity for students without SSNs. If it is not one of the situations listed here, programs should consider other pathways since Accounts Payable are earnings which treat the student as an external community member and can have different tax reporting and withholding requirements:

• Stipend, scholarship/fellowship, and academic award payments to non-UW students: This situation generally comes up in community-engaged activities where UW is partnered with other academic institutions and is paying for the other institution’s students to participate in UW sponsored programming while not a UW matriculated student.
• Non-academic awards to UW students are paid through Miscellaneous Payments: These payments are for achievement and are given this way instead of through UW Student Accounts because the spending is not restricted to allowed educational expenses. Non-academic awards are taxed differently than academic awards, so UW programs should consider the trade-offs between flexibility of spending and financial burden when designing awards.
• Miscellaneous Payments to UW students for professional services when the student does not have an SSN: These services cannot be the same as other student employee activities. In this situation, the student needs to be treated as a contractor, where they provide the services and end product while determining how they fulfill those service needs. Unlike a student employee, a student being paid as a contractor is not receiving fringe benefits as part of their compensation. The most common scenario in community-engaged activities is for a UW program to pay UW students for professional services (generally consulting) for the unique expertise they are providing to guide the program’s engagement efforts. The paying UW program may have educational resources which are available for all activity members, thus allowing contractors to also take advantage of the program’s learning outcomes for students. UW programs can also add a tax gross-up to the payment, if their funding allows and there is a targeted, equitable net payment amount for all paid opportunities connected to a particular program or activity.
• UW Supplier Invoice payments to UW students for goods, professional services over $10,000, or if the student has a business and the LLC is being paid instead of the individual student: Unless the situation is that the student is being paid for over $10,000 in professional services (similar participation situation to the Miscellaneous Payment pathway explained just above), the student is participating in activities as an external partner and not with learning outcomes as the intentional end goal.

Day-to-Day Business at UW covers the specific policies when paying through Miscellaneous Payments or UW Supplier Invoicing since these are most often used for payments to community partners and not to directly support student participation.

UW programs can support students without impacting aid or earning by covering their participation expenses instead. Repayment can happen after the student has had the expense through reimbursements (either through Expense Reports if the student is on payroll or Miscellaneous Payments if the student is not on payroll) or the UW program can pay for the expense directly. It is preferable to pay directly instead of relying on reimbursement since it creates financial barriers for participation. Not all students have financial resources to initially pay and if others in their support network pay on their behalf, this often creates confusion and complexity since the reimbursement can only go to the original purchaser. UW’s policy limits reimbursements to only pay when submitted within 60 days of the transaction, which can be too late for students who purchase participation expenses in advance (such as costs for conference participation) and apply for support later.

Incentive payments for participation or nominal amounts for volunteer activities are tax reportable earnings. This includes gift cards and Husky Card Award Account payments. UW programs should consider incentivizing participation with non cash-equivalents, such as items that would be useful for students, or the other compensation pathways for students that will have less administrative burden for programs and students.

Students need to travel to on-site community-engaged activities. Time spent in transit should be considered when planning activities, particularly when classes are in session. UW programs will generally pay for transportation costs through approved travel methods. U-Car or mileage reimbursement are the two primary options for travel to community partners. U-Car is preferable when possible since it has less of a financial impact on students and allows UW to directly manage the risk for student travel. UW programs will include travel planning when placing students with community partners.

If a UW program is sponsoring an activity for UW students, then the program is responsible for making reasonable accommodations for the students’ participation. UW programs should consider what reasonable accommodations may be needed, budget activities accordingly, and include information on the accommodation request process when posting information about activity participation.

Keeping students informed about possible safety concerns, what they are responsible for in their own precautions, what the activity provider is responsible for, and what UW is responsible for during community-engaged activities, is managed through Risk Acknowledgements. These acknowledgments are required at UW for field trips, activities with youth, and any inherently hazardous activities. Acknowledgements are completed prior to the activity and should be created with language that effectively explains the risks, responsibilities, and limitations of preventative and responsive responsibilities so that signers understand what they are agreeing to. UW programs may consider having additional process instructions to explain what these acknowledgements are and answer questions about the participation risks in activities.

Background checks are needed for any activity where a UW student will work with sensitive and secure information or, more commonly in community engagement, when they will be working with vulnerable populations. When students will be working with youth, the background check process goes through the UW Office of the Youth Protection Coordinator. Community partners may also run their own checks, but must also meet the UW check requirements. Students may have also had UW initiated background checks for previous activities or jobs, so a new check may not be needed for the current activity. With multiple check pathways, it is possible for duplicate checks.

Background checks can be a costly addition to the program administration so UW programs should check their own records for charge duplication and work with UW central units to remove duplicate or unneeded charges.

SSNs are needed payments through UW payroll and so will be used when running background checks for those paid activities. Some community partners may also require SSNs. However, SSNs are not required as part of the UW background check process. Students without SSNs will be able to indicate that they do not have an SSN when entering their information with the UW check provider and the check provider will contact them to securely gather other identification information as needed (such as state issued IDs). UW programs can provide information to UW students on which opportunities will require SSNs for hiring, payment and background checks, and which opportunities will require a check without requiring a check.

In order to support student internships, community partners generally need to pay UW for the student’s participation costs and stipend. This is a financial barrier for smaller organizations and non-profits. UW programs designing paid internships for students may be able to design pro-rated pricing for participating community partners which includes the size and nature of the organization. UW programs can also supplement student funding with gift funding, if available and allowed by the gift’s purpose.

Community partners receive payments from UW for their services and to cover their participation expenses in university sponsored activities, but not all community partners can receive all payment types and amounts. For example:

• Taxes are reported by UW for all payments to community partners, though some reporting only happens once payments exceed annual thresholds:
  • Domestic research participants will have their names and tax ID numbers verified when annual payments exceed $1500 but will not be reported by UW until annual payments exceed $2000.
  • Domestic recipients of Miscellaneous payments can have payments issued to them without a tax ID number collected until annual payments exceed $1500. Payment recipients can use ITINs and SSNs for these payments and will have tax reporting once annual payments exceed $2000.
  • Payments to international recipients automatically will have Federal Taxes withheld from payments. UW programs can include additional funds with the payment to gross-up for these taxes so all recipients can have the same net payment.
  • Reimbursed business expenses are taxable income for a community partner but if the community partner is not being paid as a service/good provider or they are only receiving an honorarium, then a reimbursement for allowable personal expenses (such as travel or per diem) can be paid and is untaxed. For reimbursements, it is important for the UW program to clearly explain if the relationship with the community partner is based on professional and business activities, or is the community participant a participant and otherwise not paid enough to be considered full compensation. If reimbursements are for the allowed personal expenses, UW programs should attempt to pay for participation expenses directly whenever possible.
• Not all recipients can receive direct deposits for payments (individuals being paid as UW suppliers by invoice or domestic recipients without tax ID numbers necessary for checking accounts) so they will receive check payments. Check payments are slower and can disrupt valuable cash-flow for financially vulnerable partners. When paying community partners with Miscellaneous Payments, checks can be requested by the UW program up to two weeks in advance to have on hand for payment directly to the community partner at the end of the paid activity.
• Direct payments to incarcerated participants and partners may not always be possible and when they are, often are not fully received. UW programs may want to pursue payments to community partners who provide support to incarcerated individuals as an alternate pathway.
• In addition to the financial barriers for community partners paying out of pocket before being reimbursed, there can be further complications from UW’s 60 day reimbursement from the time of purchase policy. If the reimbursed activities are over an extended period of time, the UW program should consider reimbursing community partners throughout the activity so activities and transactions at the beginning of the activity are not timed out.

Community partners provide value to UW’s hands-on learning offerings and that is often exchanged by a payment to UW to cover the student expenses or payments while they are in these out of class environments. UW programs work with the supervising community partners to manage student performance to ensure that they demonstrate what they are learning through on-site activities. Satisfactory student performance is necessary for an equitable exchange, especially when the community partner is paying towards administrative and sponsorship costs.

Longevity and trust in relationship building can be challenging when a student may only be with the community program for a single activity or one academic quarter. UW programs may consider identifying funding for students who have developed successful relationships with their community partner to continue activities once the original internship or course is over.

Not all exchanges are exclusively financial. UW programs also need to complete other types of agreements such as Data Processing Agreements, MOUs and Risk Acknowledgments with community partners as a part of cooperative activities. These agreements cover resources which have value and can bind a participant to responsibilities and liabilities. These documents should equitably protect both the UW (students, employees, program participants, and public resources) and the community partner.