UNMC was recently cited as the only academic health science center in the United States to be awarded the “Community Engagement” designation by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching this year.
The classification recognizes more than six decades of UNMC’s commitment to Nebraska’s urban and rural communities and provides a way for institutions to describe their identity and commitment to community with a public and nationally recognized classification.
“This designation illustrates UNMC’s broad and deep collaboration with the communities it serves across the state,” said UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D.
 |
“The opportunities to further enhance this work are rich and extensive. We will build on this new classification with an even stronger standard for what is possible when universities and communities collaborate.”
Listing of institutions
A total of 361 institutions in 33 states and U.S. territories now hold the Community Engagement classification, a status earned by a voluntary submission of required materials that describe the nature and extent of engagement with the community. UNMC joins the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Nebraska Methodist College as the only other two institutions in Nebraska with this top Carnegie designation.
A listing of the institutions that hold the Community Engagement Classification can be found on the New England Resource Center for Higher Education’s website.
Ruti Margalit, M.D., associate professor and director of the Inter-Professional Service Learning Academy (SLA), College of Public Health, and her SLA team led a 21-member campus-wide task force. “The task force accomplished an enormous amount of work within four months that would normally take 12 months. It was outstanding.”
The Carnegie Foundation defines community engagement as the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.
The 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.
Huge accomplishment for UNMC, SLA, and CoPH with the great help of Dr. Margalit! Keep up the great work!