SCRI and Brown University Community Engagement Initiative

SCRI and Brown University Community Engagement Initiative

The Siena College Research Institute is partnering with Brown University on an initiative to advance community engagement and social innovation by colleges and universities.

The National Field-Building Initiative will foster collaboration among college students, faculty, and community partners. Brown’s Swearer Center for Public Services will be the host institution for the Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement. The initiative brings together the Siena College Research Institute with several other educational and resource organizations to expand the National Assessment of Service and Community Engagement (NASCE), which collects and assesses data about community work by colleges across the nation.

Donald P. Levy, Ph.D, director of the SCRI and co-director of the NASCE, said that Siena will partner with the Swearer Center at Brown for the administration and ongoing development of NASCE. The institutional assessment measures how well participating college and universities fulfill their missions of service and community engagement, and was co-founded by Levy and Mathew Johnson, Ph.D., director of the Swearer Center.

“After working with Dr. Johnson for nearly a decade to develop and grow the NASCE, we are thrilled to move forward in partnership with the Swearer Center at Brown,” said Dr. Levy. “We look forward to the next stage of our partnership and hope to truly make a difference in the communities served by our participating institutions.”

There are currently 361 campuses that participate in the elective Community Engagement Classification. The data obtained is used for research, and to help build events, research projects and other field activities.