Hello from the Harward Center, where we are delighted to celebrate the college’s recent achievement of the Carnegie Foundation Community Engagement Classification. The classification is the gold standard for community engagement in higher education, recognizing excellence in community-engaged academic and co-curricular work. Included in the exhaustive classification are standards for community-engaged teaching and learning, civic learning and agency, public scholarship for both students and faculty, tenure and promotion criteria and practice, college-community collaboration and reciprocity, institutional leadership and resource allocation in support of community engagement, and equitable access to engagement opportunities.

While the Harward Center took the lead across two years in collecting the quantitative and qualitative data and crafting the narrative for the 89-page application, the story we told is not our own; it is the story of Bates College’s deep, sustained, and actualized commitment over many years to partnering with our neighbors in Lewiston and Maine to provide real world learning experiences that advance community goals while building useable knowledge and skills and fostering civic engagement and leadership. For insight into this accomplishment, we hope you will take a moment to enjoy this Bates Student article, written by two current students who are deeply involved in the off-campus community, and this recent Bates News story.