Tulane Merits Carnegie Community Engagement Classification

January 8, 2009

New Wave staff
newwave@tulane.edu

Recognizing the ongoing commitment of Tulane University to public service and community service initiatives, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has selected Tulane for its Community Engagement Classification, a list of 195 U.S. educational institutions that are focused on outreach.

While institutions can be classified by Carnegie in two areas, Curricular Engagement and Outreach and Partnerships, Tulane is classified for substantial commitments in both areas.

Tulane Provost Michael Bernstein said the university is delighted by the Carnegie classification because it recognizes Tulane’s leadership in the field of community engagement and service learning.

He added, “Since its inception in the early 19th century as the Medical College of Louisiana, through the devastating tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, Tulane has consistently applied its energies to the needs of the New Orleans community and the wider region in which it subsists.”

The Carnegie listing “powerfully resonates with and underscores the university’s legacy of the past century and a half,” Bernstein said.

The Tulane Center for Public Service administers the public-service graduation requirement for Tulane undergraduates, a requirement initiated after Katrina. The center oversees programs that involve New Orleans–area educational and humanitarian agencies with students and faculty members in academic collaborations.

Anthony S. Bryk, Carnegie president, said, “We hope that by acknowledging the commitment and accomplishment of these engaged institutions, the foundation will encourage other colleges and universities to move in this direction. Doing so brings benefits to the community and to the institution.”

According to Carnegie consulting scholar Amy Driscoll, who directs the Community Engagement Classification process for the foundation, “The Carnegie staff and our panel of advisers were heartened by the exemplary institutionalized practices of community engagement of the selected institutions. We noted strong alignment between institutional mission and budgetary support, infrastructure, leadership, marketing, and faculty hiring, orientation and development. There is also an increase in students’ curricular engagement with community, yet, there continue to be areas that need more informed development.”

Institutions are elected to participate by submitting required documentation describing the nature and extent of their engagement with the community, locally or beyond. They are classified in one of three categories:

• Curricular Engagement: Teaching, learning and scholarship that engage faculty, students and community members in mutually beneficial and respectful collaboration. These interactions address community-identified needs, deepen students’ civic and academic learning, enhance community well-being and enrich the scholarship of the institution.
  
  
• Outreach and Partnerships:  The two approaches to community engagement are different but related. Outreach focuses on the application and provision of institutional resources for community use with benefits to both campus and community. Partnerships focus on collaborative interactions with the community and related scholarship for the mutually beneficial exchange, exploration and application of knowledge, information and resources, including research, capacity building and economic development and other areas.
  
  
• Both Curricular Engagement and Outreach and Partnerships: Institutions with broad, substantial commitments to community engagement are recognized. (This is the category in which Tulane earned recognition.)

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 continues to be used for a wide range of purposes by academic researchers, institutional personnel, policymakers and others.

Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an act of Congress, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is an independent policy and research center with the primary mission “to do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold and dignify the profession of the teacher.”