Hello,
I watch the education noticeboard and am a fan of school outreach. I am going to share a contact seeking support through the education program and will try to keep doing this when I see professors in the region. I am not expecting anyone to respond to this but wanted to share that the demand exists.
I know that this Cascadia community hardly has capacity now to manage an odd flow of incoming projects, but I wanted to express that odd projects continually come in through various channels. One of those channels is the education board.
See here for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard&a...
A professor teaching advanced Latin has a class of 5 students and they plan to edit Wikipedia, both in English and in Latin. The professor knows little about Wikipedia and the students probably also have not edited. They are requesting some support. Obviously they will have a hard time and limited response on Latin Wikipedia and probably so in editing Latin articles here.
There is an organization called the Wikipedia Education Foundation which will provide some support to this professor, including directions to online training and 1-2 phone calls. This is definitely better than nothing, and in my opinion is enough to allow the class to at least give minimally useful contributions, but there is little chance of engagement after the class using this process.
In my opinion, the next step in engagement is having some Wikipedian try to work with the professor to encourage them to come back next year with more students. Recruiting students to stay is very difficult.
Still, this opportunity exists, it is easier to recruit people who come to us than to go out in the world and pitch people cold, and professors and classes really do mean well and will contribute a lot of time and good information.
I think that if Cascadia is funded, then having one of the paid positions on point to greet and be a point of contact for professors should be an outreach strategy which is considered.
yours,