Campus Compact, the largest higher ed association dedicated to community engagement, hosted a vibrant Compact25 conference in Atlanta from March 31-April 2, 2025. While the majority of sessions at the conference were focused on civic education and the role of community engagement in instruction, community-engaged scholarship was also well-represented.

As defined in a workshop hosted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2024, community-engaged scholarship “embeds rightsholder perspectives throughout the research life-cycle and encourages the production and use of knowledge in active collaboration with partners, including policy makers, practitioners, and communities.” Scholars who use a community-engaged approach believe that it generates more relevant research questions, more appropriate methodologies, and more accurate interpretations of findings. It also engenders greater trust between the academy and the community. An increasing number of institutions are seeking the Carnegie community engagement classification, where community-engaged scholarship conducted by faculty, staff, or students is among the criteria used to evaluate applicants.

Practitioners have identified a number of barriers to community-engaged scholarship, including limited formalized training in community-engaged approaches, spotty institutional recognition of community-engaged scholarship, and a lack of trust and connection between institutions and their communities. At Compact25, institutions showcased the wide variety of activities that they are undertaking to overcome these barriers. These activities fall into three major categories: training researchers to conduct community-engaged research; changing institutional and discipline-specific norms so that community-engaged research can be properly recognized; and supporting and initiating partnerships for community-engaged scholarship.

Training

The first substantial area of activity that institutions have undertaken is training researchers in the methods and techniques of community-engaged scholarship. As part of TRUCEN, a Campus Compact affinity network for R1 institutions, Maranda Ward (George Washington University), Tania Boster (Princeton University), and Elaine Donnelly (Tufts University) presented instructional materials they are developing to train faculty, staff, students, and community members. The materials invite learners to engage in problem-solving around common types of complex scenarios that can occur in community-engaged research projects.

Elaine Ward (Merrimack College) presented on the Publicly Engaged Action & Research Lab (PEARL), a network of primarily early-career community-engaged scholars who meet regularly to support and mentor one another. Ward and Meghan Zulian (University of California-Davis) also led a roundtable on graduate education in community-engaged methods where Zulian presented her findings on a survey of interdisciplinary graduate programs. She found variation in how students gain community-engaged research skills and whether students are encouraged to do their own projects. Attendees at the roundtable are also doing work in this area; Drew Pearl (Kansas State University) teaches a graduate course on community-engaged research methods, Lucas Diaz (Tulane University) is writing a book on graduate education in community-engaged scholarship, and Cammie Jones-Friedrichs (Bard College) advocates for graduate students in her role as the Director of the Carnegie Elective for Community Engagement.

Infrastructure

Another major focus of the conference was in developing systems to recognize and acknowledge community-engaged scholarship within the structures of academic employment. Derek Miller and Sylvia Gale (University of Richmond) presented on three resources they have authored with their colleagues: a guide for hiring committees on how to recruit community-engaged scholars; a guide for department chairs on how to evaluate community-engaged scholarship; and a guide for community-engaged scholars on how to document their scholarship for tenure and promotion. In particular, Miller and Gale have developed a template for community-engaged scholars to request a letter of support from community partners to be submitted with their tenure portfolio.

In another session, Andrew Furco (University of Minnesota) and Lynn Blanchard (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) gave an author talk on their report, Faculty Engaged Scholarship: Setting Standards and Building Conceptual Clarity, about how departments at their institutions had responded to calls to incorporate community engagement into their mission statements and their tenure and promotion guidelines. Recognition of community-engaged scholarship can also happen through institutional software used to track campus community engagement initiatives; Matt Hagen (University of South Carolina Upstate) described how he inputs this data for the Office of Service Learning/Community Engagement.

Building bridges

A third theme was on how institutions can serve as facilitators of community partnerships for the purpose of scholarship. In some cases, the institution connects interested researchers with interested community members. For example, Lisa Schwartz (University of Colorado, Boulder) presented the outcomes of a program developed by the Office for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship to pair university scientists with community artists to make public art about the environment for a small stipend. One of the keynotes described a similar program at Trinity College: through the Liberal Arts Action Lab, community partners propose semester-long research projects to pursue in collaboration with student and faculty teams from Trinity College and Capital Community College.

Funding community-engaged scholarship is another way that institutions facilitate partnerships. In a poster session, Daniel Fidalgo Tomé, Nyeema Watson, and Nathaniel Wright (Rutgers University – Camden) presented on the work of the Urban Innovation Fund, which provides financial support for partnerships such as these, formed with the goal of producing community-engaged scholarship. In a roundtable, Liz Brandt described how the Bonner Foundation funds community-engaged undergraduate research projects around the country.

In addition to connecting interested parties and supporting them financially, institutions also use communications strategies to raise awareness about existing community engagement partnerships and thereby lay the groundwork for future partnerships. Mary Churchill and Cara Mattaliano (Boston University Wheelock) described the Office of Strategic Partnerships & Community Engagement’s (SPACE) highly successful communications strategy involving a weekly newsletter and frequent social media posts highlighting the community-engaged scholarship of Boston University faculty. They noted that their newsletter is regularly read by influential community members and serves as a catalyst for future projects.

Looking ahead

At Ithaka S+R, we are focusing on the systems, services, policies, and people that ensure the production and circulation of new knowledge. The US research enterprise is a complex and dynamic system that, since the second world war, has created many benefits for society including in the areas of health, energy, agriculture, and commerce. Though the research enterprise is constantly in flux as new approaches such as community-engaged scholarship transform how scholars conduct cutting-edge research, the research enterprise has relied for 75 years on the bedrock stability of federal funding to bring the benefits of these innovations to ordinary citizens.

In this moment of increasing societal distrust of higher education and the cancellation of federal funding for many parts of the research enterprise, Compact25 provided a hopeful vision for the future. While community-engaged research projects may be at high risk of losing funding, plenary speakers emphasized that even people who distrust the academy tend to trust their local institutions, inspired by the good work they see in their own communities. Speakers positioned community engagement, including community-engaged scholarship, as a way to re-inspire society’s trust in the academy.

In one of the last sessions of the conference, James Roland (Emory University), Agnieszka Nance (Tulane), and Adam Gismondi (Harvard University) led a discussion based on the TRUCEN Sustained Conversation Group entitled “The Dream Lab.” Roland encouraged attendees to “make gumbo” out of recent events and envision a future where the academy makes a positive impact on the world. The many activities institutions are undertaking to support community-engaged scholars provide a path forward to that positive future.