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Despite our commitment to community engagement, we had not previously compiled information about the many types and examples of community engagement that occur here. The self-study tells us that we have much to celebrate. It also provides us with a tool for analyzing where we can further increase our efforts.
—A small private college in the Midwest
The Carnegie process is now informing university-wide strategic planning and is being turned into a set of recommendations. It has revitalized attention to the core urban mission of the institution and created widespread energy to deepen community engagement.
—A large urban university on the East coast
Over the last few years, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has engaged in a comprehensive re-examination of its traditional classification system. The redesign stemmed from a concern about the inadequacy of the classification for representing institutional similarities and differences and its insensitivity to the evolution of higher education. In December 2006, the foundation announced the inaugural selection of 76 U. S. colleges and universities to be newly classified as “institutions of community engagement,” the first of a set of elective classifications intended to broaden the categorization of colleges and universities. Of those 76 institutions, most reported the kind of impact described in the opening quotations. The enthusiastic response to the new classification signaled the eagerness of institutions to have their community engagement acknowledged with a national and publicly recognized classification.
The Documentation Framework
Before the first formal classification began in 2006, extensive efforts were devoted to developing a framework that institutions could use to document engagement with their communities. That framework was designed to:
1) Respect the diversity of institutions and their approaches to community engagement;
2) Engage institutions in a process of inquiry, reflection, and self-assessment; and
3) Honor institutions’ achievements while promoting the ongoing development of their programs.
The development of the framework for this new classification occurred in three phases. The first consisted of consultation with national leaders and a review of the current literature on community engagement. The second phase was a review of current practices in documenting such engagement, such as those by Campus Compact, the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), and individual institutions. The third phase of development was an ambitious and informative pilot study with 14 institutions that had been identified as significantly engaged with their communities. Representatives from those institutions reviewed and critiqued an initial framework, tested it on their campuses, and made significant contributions to the final design.
In order to respect the diversity of institutions and their approaches, the term “community engagement” was defined broadly as “the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.” The documentation framework was also designed to accommodate institutional variations in philosophy, approaches, and contexts.
Amy Driscoll is a consulting scholar with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, where she coordinates the new elective classification for community engagement. Previously director of community/university partnerships at Portland State University, her publications include Making Outreach Visible: A Guide to Documenting Professional Service and Outreach (1999), with Ernest Lynton.
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