NC Campus Compact’s twice-yearly network meetings bring together key campus contacts for professional development, networking, and a chance to learn what’s new in civic and community engagement at coalition schools. Last week’s summer network meetings at Davidson College and UNC Wilmington brought together 52 faculty and administrators representing 24 campuses.
On August 2nd at Davidson, participants were welcomed by President Carol Quillen, a member of NC Campus Compact’s executive board, who spoke of the college’s liberal arts tradition as rooted in the notions of education as a public good and learning that empowers students to build a just society. On August 4th at UNCW, Associate Vice Chancellor and Dean of Students Mike Walker welcomed our group, and shared news of the university’s expanded programs and facilities as well as a new strategic plan that includes civic and community engagement as a key focus.
During the professional development portion of the day, executive director Leslie Garvin led a process of “planning to plan,” readying campuses to develop their own Civic Action Plans this fall. The plans are the next step in putting into practice the principles expressed in national Campus Compact’s 30th Anniversary Action Statement. The statement was signed last spring by more than 25 NC presidents and chancellors, who joined more than 400 signatories nationwide.
Key NC Campus Compact updates included previews of 2016-17 programs and events, including:
- the annual student conference CSNAP, hosted in November by UNC Asheville
- the annual NC Presidents Forum, hosted by NC A&T State University on February 8, 2017
- a social change forum to explore connections between social entrepreneurship and community engagement, hosted by Duke University on February 14, 2017
- the Gulf-South Summit in March 2017, hosted by UNC Greensboro, which is taking the place of the Compact’s annual PACE Conference
- the Community Engagement Administrators Conference focusing on alternative breaks, hosted by Elon University on June 6-7, 2017.
Among the many exciting campus updates, we learned:
- Davidson College will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its Bonner Program this year while UNC Charlotte will welcome its first Bonner cohort.
- NC Central University is sponsoring a new state AmeriCorps program focusing on veterans and Wake Forest University has created its own AmeriCorps VISTA program to support non-profit partners in Winston-Salem.
- UNC Wilmington has created the #EngageUNCW program to encourage university staff to utilize their paid community service leave and is sponsoring an engagement summit this fall to convene local community partners and various engaged university departments and divisions.
- Many campuses are supporting non-partisan student voting and election engagement efforts with the help of working groups and student fellows from organizations like the Andrew Goodman Foundation, Campus Vote Project, and the Campus Election Engagement Project.