Legitimacy: If your campus has made a commitment to community engagement, the classification, with the Carnegie Foundation’s credibility, provides you with a new level of legitimacy and public recognition and visibility for your work.
Accountability: The classification is one way to demonstrate that the institution is fulfilling its mission to serve the public good – and this is applicable across all institutional types with added importance for public, state colleges and universities. It can serve as a political device to justify activities to external stakeholders.
It can also serve as a Catalyst for Change: The classification provides a tool for fostering institutional alignment for community-based teaching, learning and scholarship – it can be a catalyst for efforts to improve teaching and learning through curricular connection to community-based public problem solving (through experiential, collaborative, active, and problem-based learning).
It also proclaims the Institutional Identity: The classification is a way to clarify institutional identity and claim or reclaim a specific mission that distinguishes the institution from peers and establishes a specific competitive, market niche.
The application process provides an opportunity for Institutional Self Assessment: The indicators of community engagement provide a way to bring the disparate parts of the campus together in way that advances a unified agenda. At the same time it allows for the identification of promising practices that can be shared across the institution.
How Campus Compact Can Help
- Professional Development
- On-campus Consulting
- Events and programs
