The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching selected Elon to receive its 2015 Community Engagement Classification, which signifies ongoing university efforts to instill an ethos of service and civic engagement in all areas of campus life.
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is once again lauding Elon University for its efforts to promote civic engagement.
The foundation announced Wednesday that Elon has received its 2015 Community Engagement Classification in recognition of the university’s ongoing commitment to bettering the world through the creation of high-impact civic programs.
Elon received the same distinction in 2006 when Carnegie first developed the classification, which offers a way for schools to easily describe their identity and values.
The elective classification involves data collection and documentation of important aspects of institutional mission, identity and initiatives, with colleges and universities submitting an application that gave examples of community engagement in their mission, culture, leadership and practices.
The university was recognized for a sustained institutional commitment to community engagement since receiving its first classification nearly a decade ago. Ongoing efforts include the following:
- Creation of the Elon Academy college access and success program, which has helped 144 local high school students with limited financial means or no family history of college pursue dreams of higher education.
- Opened the Center for Access & Success to integrate various programs across campus that assist students from pre-K through college.
- Created the Downtown Center for Community Engagement in Burlington, N.C., through the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement.
- Launched the Civic Engagement Scholars Program to prepare students to become agents of change in their communities.
- Implemented the Campus Kitchen at Elon University, an affiliate of the national Campus Kitchens Project, to package unserved food from dining halls for distribution to those in need in Alamance County.
- Partnered with the Peace Corps in 2013 to become only the sixth school at the time to host a Peace Corps Prep Program to prepare students for careers in international development.
- Launched the Council on Civic Engagement to create a central group responsible for promoting civic engagement activities across campus.
- Further supported Project Pericles, which started at Elon in 2002 to provide select students each year with common courses that prepare them for creating a project focused on social change.
Elon is one of 361 institutions that now hold the Community Engagement Classification. The reclassification is valid through 2025.
“Service and civic engagement are bedrocks of an Elon education,” said Elon President Leo M. Lambert. “There is no more important work to be done than preparing young people to serve as leaders in their communities. Our faculty and staff should be rightfully proud of a Carnegie classification that reflects the outstanding ways in which they pursue such a noble mission.”
The Carnegie Foundation, through the work of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, developed the first typology of American colleges and universities in 1970 as a research tool to describe and represent the diversity of U.S. higher education. The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education – now housed at Indiana University Bloomington’s Center for Postsecondary Research – continues to be used for a wide range of purposes by academic researchers, institutional personnel, policymakers and others.
The Carnegie civic engagement reclassification is the latest recognition for Elon’s civic engagement and service efforts. In December, the Corporation for National & Community Service named Elon University to its 2014 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for service efforts to America’s communities.
Honorees for the President’s Honor Roll were chosen based on a series of selection factors including scope and innovation of service projects, percentage of student participation in service activities, incentives for service, and the extent to which the school offers academic service-learning courses.
In the 2013-14 academic year alone, 3,100 Elon University students contributed a collective 127,000 hours of service to local and regional organizations. That represented an increase of 23 percent over 2012-13 figures.
Fifty-seven academic service-learning courses were offered last year with students contributing more than 34,000 hours of service as part of their classes.