The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching selected Lipscomb University as one of 196 colleges and universities nationwide to earn its 2010 Community Engagement Classification.

This classification places Lipscomb among the top 311 (or almost 8 percent) universities in the nation, including the University of Notre Dame, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Pennsylvania State and Syracuse universities.

In order to be selected, institutions provided descriptions and examples of institutionalized practices of community engagement that showed alignment among mission, culture, leadership, resources and practices.

“We noted strong institutional alignment across leadership, infrastructure, strategic planning, budgeting, faculty teaching and scholarship and community partnerships,” explained Amy Driscoll, a consulting scholar with the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE), the Carnegie Foundation’s administrative partner for the classification.

“There is increased student engagement tied to the curriculum as well as increased use of institutional measures such as the National Survey for Student Engagement for understanding student engagement in learning through community engagement,” she said.

In the past five years, Lipscomb has built on it strong faith-tradition of volunteer service to build a more structured service culture ingrained within the mission and culture of the university. While traditional student favorites such as Service Day and social club fund-raisers continue each year, the university has also:

• Established a service-learning graduation requirement tied to designated service-learning courses,
  
• Established six community-based institutes that bring innovative and collaborative ideas and resources to Middle Tennessee,
  
• Developed classroom instruction with practical application in mind, and
  
• Developed a long-term community development project with various international partners in Guatemala.

Lipscomb established the SALT (Serving and Learning Together) Program, requiring all students to meet specific service-learning requirements in order to graduate, in fall 2008. This program alone has resulted in more than 2,000 students involved in recent community service logging a record number of 121,910 student service hours within the past few years.

In summarizing the applications for the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification nationwide, Driscoll noted the need for more attention to developing reciprocal relationships between higher education and the community. Some institutions continue to operate in a “charity model” with the one-way application of resources, expertise, student and faculty support to community without acknowledging community assets, expertise, knowledge and resources, she said.

In contrast, Lipscomb University has established various ways to involve community leaders and experts in programs and projects of the university, such as:

• Establishing advisory councils for business and other academic programs,
  
• Providing on-campus locations for non-profit groups such as the Davidson Group (which promotes diversity awareness among businesspeople), and
  
• Hosting various “conversations of significance” through the Institutes of Lipscomb University – public gatherings to discuss difficult issues in society such as racial diversity, religious conflict and health care ethics.

“We are certainly gratified to be recognized by the Carnegie Foundation, one of the premier organizations in the country, for the engagement our students, faculty and staff have provided. We are pleased to see an organization with tremendous credibility provide Lipscomb with this prestigious Carnegie Classification,” said Lipscomb University President L. Randolph Lowry.

Among the service programs that contributed to Lipscomb’s Carnegie classification are:

• The Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team, which spent 1,400 hours in volunteer service working to become socially responsible business executives through coordinating nonprofit services. The SIFE team involved about 100 students in establishing a marketing campaign for a local charity thrift store, coordinating neighborhood meetings on energy conservation and creating a pen pal program to enhance the English skills of students in Madagascar.
  
• The Lipscomb College of Business was the site of the NASBA Center for the Public Trust’s first Student Center for Public Trust chapter, intended to provide students with an ethics forum and leadership resources along with a path to a values-driven course of action in which to impact the world of business.
  
• The Institute for Sustainable Practice has established an annual Green Business Summit, the first in Middle Tennessee, and the Green Business Leadership Awards, honoring recipients such as Carlos Ghosn, president and CEO, Nissan Motor Company.
  
• Business faculty and graduate students partner with Nashville’ CABLE, Tennessee’s largest and most established network of professionals with over 500 members, every two years to produce the Women in Corporate Leadership census report , to document the need for more gender-equality in the executive suites and boardrooms of the state’s public companies.
  
• The Lipscomb College of Education has partnered with the local public school system and a local charter school to transform a struggling middle school in Nashville. The college will provide on-site professional development for teachers in a plan expected to become a national model of education reform.

Unlike the Foundation’s other classifications that rely on national data, this is an “elective” classification. Institutions elected to participate by submitting required documentation describing the nature and extent of their engagement with the community, be it local or beyond. This approach enables the foundation to address elements of institutional mission and distinctiveness that are not represented in the national data on colleges and universities.

“Through a classification that acknowledges significant commitment to, and demonstration of, community engagement, the foundation encourages colleges and universities to become more deeply engaged, to improve teaching and learning and to generate socially responsive knowledge to benefit communities,” said Carnegie President Anthony Bryk. “We are very pleased with the movement we are seeing in this direction.”

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.

A listing of all institutions in the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification can be found on the Carnegie website at www.carnegiefoundation.org/.

For a list of those approved in 2010, go to this address: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/sites/default/files/2010_Community_engagement_institutions.pdf