Initial curators: Tabitha Underwood & H. Anne Weiss

To recommend additional resources to include in this knowledge hub, please contact us at campus@compact.org

Introduction

When campuses have created and signed our Action Statement, the next step is to develop a meaningful and strategic civic action plan (CAP). To do so, however, a campus must first understand its current state of engagement; to plan for future action, one must understand their starting point. This entails a self-assessment of engagement across a variety to indicators, putting tracking and monitoring into place, and utilizing national data and trends to inform the plan and future practice. An institutional self-assessment will include a comprehensive examination of the following themes and best practices of an engaged campus: institutional culture, curriculum and pedagogy, faculty roles and rewards, mechanisms and resources, and community-campus exchange. A variety of resources to support self-assessment, tracking and monitoring, and the institutionalization of engagement can be found in the following sections. 

Key resources

A) Indicators of an Engaged Campus

B) Self-Assessment Tools

These assessment tools walk campuses through determining where they are in the process of institutionalization of engagement as expressed in themes of an engaged campus. Institutionalization Rubrics

Carnegie Community Engagement Classification

    • While not an actual assessment rubric, the application for the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification can be a useful tool in conducting a self-assessment since it follows the themes of Campus Compact’s Indicators of Engagement. 

Anchor Strategies

Compilation of Rubrics

Other Assessment Resources

Assessing Social Impact: Tools/resources for measuring and analyzing social impact of programs: 

Other Assessment Considerations:  The assessment tools provided here indicate whether certain aspects of engagement are in place; however, they will not illustrate the magnitude of engagement. You may also want to consider the following (also available in the Carnegie Application):

    • Number of service-learning courses
    • Percentage of the curriculum that is service-learning or community-based
    • Number of faculty teaching service-learning or community-based learning courses
    • Percentage of faculty teaching service-learning or community-based learning courses
    • Hours of service-learning
    • Hours of co-curricular service
    • Number and length of community partnerships
    • Number of students participating in some form of community-based learning/activity
    • Number of community-based research projects or courses
    • For research institutions: Number of faculty involved in public scholarship or broader impacts research
    • Percentage of community-based research projects in relation to total undergraduate research
    • Number of faculty/staff involved in community service
    • Percentage of students voting (data available from NSLVE—National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement at https://idhe.tufts.edu/nslve

You may also want to consider ways you measure and track progress towards equity in your engagement and partnership efforts as well as recruitment for equity and access.

C) Tracking & Monitoring

Overviews & Guidance for Developing Tracking & Monitoring Systems

D) National Surveys


Organizations

Exemplars

Institutionalization

    • University of North Carolina-Greensboro Emily Janke, Director, Institute for Community and Economic Engagement. A leader in supporting, sustaining, and enhancing how higher education can be an inclusive, collaborative, and responsive community member.
    • Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis Amy Conrad Warner, Vice Chancellor of Community Engagement. This newly formed position spawned during the campus’s process of completing the application for Carnegie’s Community Engagement Classification.

Tracking & Monitoring Community Engagement

    • Home Grown Example: Michigan State National Collaborative for the Study of University Engagement, (Burton Bargerstock, Director) have developed a unique system (the Outreach and Engagement Measurement Instrument- OEMI).
  • Other Useful Information

    • Accreditation: Many accrediting bodies have standards or requirements for community engagement at an institutional level.