ABSTRACT
Sustainable development is flat out not possible without placing governments, community organizations, and other stakeholders, including the private sector, at the forefront of the 2030 Agenda. This chapter focuses on such change-directed collaborative initiatives. It provides a guiding framework for evaluating university-stakeholder outreach evaluations. In the coming decades, decisive university-stakeholder collaborations in bringing about transnational sustainable development (TSD) will be a prime indicator of success for institutions of higher learning around the world. Evaluating the outcomes and impacts of diverse forms of cross-sector university-society collaboration in the interest of TSD is challenging and important, but rarely reflective and typically underreported. Higher education's sustainable-development mission cannot progress without "relevant interaction with and commitment to" the university's "surrounding environment". The term "public engagement" fruitfully captures the context of sustainable-development initiatives involving higher-education institutions and the academic community acting in concert with stakeholders in their surrounding environments.
