Carnegie recognizes community engagement efforts
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching last week congratulated more than 350 colleges and universities for their engagement with local communities.
Mississippi State University earned the community engagement classification during Carnegie's 2010 selection process and is among those being recognized along with 83 institutions receiving the classification for the first time and another 157 being re-classified after earning their original designation in 2006 or 2008. MSU was among 121 institutions that gained the 2010 classification.
To be selected, institutions provided descriptions and examples of institutionalized practices of community engagement that showed alignment among mission, culture, leadership, resources and practices.
MSU projects that helped earn the community engagement designation included, among others:
-- Body Walk, an MSU Extension partnership with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi, which takes elementary students through a mobile display of making healthy food choices and developing a healthy lifestyle;
-- Camp Jabber Jaw, an alliance between MSU's T.K. Martin Center for Technology and Disability and the Mississippi Department of Rehabilitation Services, which helps individuals with augmentative and alternative communication skills; and the
-- Harrison County Beach Project, an effort of the MSU Department of Landscape Architecture's Center for Sustainable Design and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Harrison County, which provided landscape design and vegetation assistance in restoring the hurricane-damaged coastal beachfront.
Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an act of Congress, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is an independent policy and research center. Its mission is to support needed transformations in American education through tighter connections between teaching practice, evidence of student learning, the communication and use of this evidence, and structured opportunities to build knowledge.
For more information on the Carnegie Foundation, visit www.carnegiefoundation.org.
MSU is Mississippi's flagship research university, available online at www.msstate.edu, facebook.com/msstate, instagram.com/msstate and twitter.com/msstate.
Allison Matthews | Public Affairs
