For five years as the faculty fellow for community-based learning, Motley has been a tireless advocate for reciprocal campus-community relationships.
Phillip Motley, Jr., professor of communication design and faculty fellow for community-based learning, received the 2025 North Carolina Campus Engagement Engaged Faculty award during the Pathways to Achieving Civic Engagement (PACE) Conference on Feb. 12 at Guilford Technical Community College. The Engaged Faculty Award recognizes one faculty member in North Carolina for exemplary engaged teaching and scholarship, including leadership that advances students’ community and civic learning, conducting community-based research, fostering reciprocal community partnerships and building institutional commitments to service-learning and community engagement.
“Hopefully this award speaks not about me, but about Elon,” said Motley. “It says that Elon is doing really good work in this space of community-based learning.”
Motley is from North Carolina and even attended basketball camp at Elon as a youth. He arrived at Elon in 2009 after teaching for four years in the Wisconsin university system. Motley is now in the fifth and final year as the faculty fellow for community-based learning, where he recruits faculty members to integrate community-based learning into their courses while providing guidance and support to those who have already begun implementing it within their courses.
Bob Frigo, assistant dean of Campus Life and director of the Kernodle Center for Civic Life shared that, under Motley’s leadership, the number of courses on campus incorporating community engagement has grown from 64 (2020-21) to 87 (2023-24).
Motley supported the growth of community-based learning pedagogy in STEM courses in the past five years, namely in nursing and engineering. He helped create community-based learning course development grants to support the evolution of existing courses across the disciplines into Community-Based Learning designated courses. And, during his fellowship, the Kernodle Center for Civic Life, in partnership with the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, developed a scaffolded faculty development model for colleagues teaching Community-Based Learning classes and Community Engaged classes. In 2024, U.S. News and World Report ranked Elon as number two in the nation for service-learning.
“In his role as Faculty Fellow for Community-Based Learning over the past five years, Phillip has provided exceptional leadership in allowing Elon to make measurable strides to advance our work in community engagement.”
Bob Frigo, assistant dean of Campus Life and director of the Kernodle Center for Civic Life
Sara Beth Hardy, assistant director for community partnerships, has worked closely with Motley for the past four years in his role as fellow and said that Motley has championed efforts to redesign courses to include community-engaged components, facilitated faculty workshops and communities of practice to encourage peer collaboration, and advocated for the recognition of engaged scholarship in promotion and tenure policies.
“His ability to foster collaboration across disciplines has established him as an unmatched fixture in advancing Elon’s mission to shape the global citizens our world needs,” said Hardy.
She said that in every aspect of his work, Motley exemplifies the values of engaged teaching, scholarship and leadership.
“His dedication to creating meaningful partnerships and his unwavering commitment to positive university-wide change make him an outstanding candidate for the North Carolina Campus Engagement Engaged Faculty Award,” said Hardy.
Motley expressed humility when discussing the award and praises his collaborations with the Kernodle Center for Civic Life and his fellow faculty members for doing the work needed. He is awed by his students for being invested in effective practices with communities. He says in his 20 years of teaching, there is only one experience where students repeatedly stop worrying about the grades and become more concerned about the benefit and outcome of the project and the community needs–and that’s community-based learning.
“There’s something really nice about students having this chance to have an authentic experience that’s much more proximate to the real world, regardless of the subject matter,” said Motley.
He has helped expand Elon’s definition of community-based learning, which has opened opportunities for students to support small businesses locally and abroad. Motley is particularly proud of students pursuing community-based projects in Central America, where he helps facilitate student projects like web and digital design.
Frigo describes Motley as a leader who has leveraged community-based learning across the disciplines to advance the Elon University mission of preparing civically engaged graduates who are global citizens and informed leaders motivated by a concern for the common good.
“I am confident that his contributions will inspire others to pursue impactful engagement in their own academic and professional journeys long beyond the completion of his tenure as Faculty Fellow for Community-Based Learning,” said Hardy.