Meet Emily Phaup, Campus Compact’s Professional Development Manager. She lives in the small town of Mosier, Oregon in the Columbia River Gorge where she spends her free time “hiking, camping, biking, birding, boating, [and] salmon fishing,” training for marathons, and doing service work in her community.
Emily completed a life-changing year of AmeriCorps service which led her to pursue a career in civic engagement and community development. The field “merges my passion for education and my passion for community through a foundation of equity and justice,” Emily says. Immediately following her year of service, she went back to school to pursue a graduate degree in sustainable communities from Northern Arizona University, and went on to spend 8 years with the Oregon State University Extension Service where she led 4-H youth development programs in rural communities.
She later participated in the summer intensive on community engaged scholarship at Michigan State University while in the final phase of her Ph.D. program. “It was just such an impactful training that I kind of jumped feet first into the field and haven't looked back,” Emily says about the summer intensive. “Because of that training, I totally changed my dissertation topic and turned over my whole committee and started focusing my research on community engaged scholars’ experience with institutional support.” Since then, she has led the Northwest Five Consortium for Community Engaged Learning, and finished her Ph.D. Emily started her role as Professional Development Manager at Campus Compact in February of this year.
As the Professional Development Manager, Emily’s work will be centered on the Community Engagement Professional Credentialing Program, Pathways for Public Service Working Group, Engaged Scholars Initiative, Impact Awards, and the resource library. In her role, she’s most looking forward to “providing a professional home for community engagement professionals [and] practitioners, [and] developing a strong network in the field where they can find support, resources, and a sense of community.”
“I feel so strongly that the service learning, community engagement field offers such a responsive and dynamic approach to addressing the evolving needs of both students and communities and bridging the divide between higher [education] and communities,” Emily says when talking about what excites her most about the field of civic engagement and community engaged scholarship. “There's just so much potential in these reciprocal community partnerships [through] having academics [and] community leaders learning from each other and bringing together their individual expertise to address our society's most pressing challenges…The field has a potential to unlock real transformative change in our institutions that could then support communities in really meaningful ways.”
We’re grateful to Emily for bringing her wealth of personal and professional experiences to the work. We look forward to seeing what she will accomplish as Campus Compact’s Professional Development Manager. Read more about Emily Phaup here.