In 2010 and 2014, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching recognized NC State’s continued culture of student service and engagement by again classifying the university as a community engaged institution. During early 2025, the Office of Outreach and Engagement is again assembling information to submit for the Carnegie reclassification application.

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 creation and exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.

The purpose of community engagement is the partnership (of knowledge and resources) between colleges and universities and the public and private sectors to enrich scholarship, research, and creative activity; enhance curriculum, teaching, and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues; and contribute to the public good.

Community engagement describes activities that are undertaken with community members using particular processes of reciprocity in relationships and epistemic inclusion. In reciprocal and epistemically inclusive partnerships, there are collaborative community–campus definitions of problems, solutions, and measures of success. Community engagement requires processes in which academics recognize, respect, and value the knowledge, perspectives, and resources of community partners and that are designed to serve a public purpose, building the capacity of individuals, groups, and organizations involved to understand and collaboratively address issues of public concern.

Community engagement is shaped by relationships between those in the institution and those outside the institution that are grounded in the qualities of reciprocity, mutual respect, shared authority, and co-creation of goals and outcomes. Such relationships are by their very nature transdisciplinary (knowledge transcending the disciplines and the college or university) and asset based (where the strengths, skills, and knowledge of those in the community are validated and legitimized).

Community engagement assists campuses in fulfilling their civic purpose through socially useful knowledge creation and dissemination and through the cultivation of democratic values, skills, and habits. The difference between community engagement that happens at institutions and institutional commitment to community engagement is evidenced through policies, infrastructure, reciprocal partnerships, and deep and pervasive processes as well as outputs and outcomes. Through this self-study process, institutions are encouraged to demonstrate the arc of community engaged success and pervasiveness across institutional structures and areas of responsibility.

Contact outreach_info@ncsu.edu for questions about the Carnegie Reclassification