Academic Engagement (AE) directs engagement programs that have earned the Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement across UNG campuses. AE coordinates and facilitates comprehensive educational programming, supports community-based learning opportunities, and invests in discovery through engagement scholarship.
Developing a community of engaged students and faculty and building relationships with partners can help us to tackle complex challenges and enhance UNG and community resources. We will build a flexible research collaboration network (RCN) across faculty, departments, and colleges.
This will generate research that builds upon our understanding of productive community engagement efforts and will also:
As Academic Engagement, our focus is on academic activities: opportunities for faculty, staff, and students to foster learning beyond the classroom (service-learning, community-based practicum and internship opportunities, community-engaged undergraduate research, engagement scholarship, etc.).
These activities are subsumed under the broader, more extended definition of engagement captured by the Carnegie "community engagement" classification: "the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching 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.”
