News

Community Engagement and Scholarship Award
Call for Nominations

Deadline: December 19, 2012

ESTABLISHED 2008
The Penn State Award for Community Engagement and Scholarship was established in 2008 by the Vice President for Outreach in collaboration with the University Council on Engaged Scholarship and the Faculty Senate Committee on Outreach.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The award recognizes an outstanding Penn State project or initiative that best exemplifies the description of an engaged institution found in the Kellogg Commission’s report Returning to Our Roots: The Engaged Institution. The Penn State Award for Community Engagement and Scholarship consists of a stipend of $1,000.

The recipient of the Penn State Community Engagement and Scholarship Award is submitted as Penn State’s nominee for the Northeast region W.K. Kellogg Foundation Outreach Scholarship Award, sponsored by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU). Regional winners advance to compete for the national C. Peter Magrath University Community Engagement Award.

REGIONAL AND NATIONAL AWARDS

The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities recognizes five regional winners of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Outreach Scholarship Award at the annual Engagement Scholarship Conference in September/October, where they will compete for the national C. Peter Magrath University Community Engagement Award. Regional winners each receive a stipend of $6,000; $1,500 toward the production of digitized story on the initiative; and $2,000 in travel costs to attend the Outreach Scholarship Conference.

The C. Peter Magrath University Community Engagement Award is a national award that recognizes outstanding outreach and engagement partnerships between universities and communities. Only regional winners of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Outreach Scholarship Award are considered for the Magrath Award, which is presented by the APLU at its annual meeting in November. Each national award winner receives a cash prize of $20,000.

See APLU for previous winners of the regional and national awards.

CRITERIA AND SUBMISSION MATERIALS

Engagement partnerships that are featured in the applications should exemplify the description of engaged institutions found in the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities’ report Returning to our Roots: The Engaged Institution. As noted in Returning to Our Roots: The Engaged Institution:

By engagement, we refer to redesigned teaching, research, and extension and service functions that are sympathetically and productively involved with the communities universities serve, however community is defined… By engagement the Commission envisions partnerships, two-way streets defined by mutual respect among the partners for what each brings to the table.

The initiative must have a designated lead faculty or staff member, and must include one or more community partners.

The following information should be included in the nomination dossier:

1. Completed nomination form.
2. Description of the initiative that specifically addresses the following aspects of the project. (Please limit the description to 10 pages or less.)
   
   
   • How the project exemplifies the description of an engaged institution found in Returning to Our Roots: The Engaged Institution, including characteristics of responsiveness, respect for partners, academic neutrality, accessibility, integration, coordination, and resource partnerships;
   • Institutional commitment, endorsements, and future plans reflecting a commitment to engagement;
   • Relationship between the partners, including a demonstration of the reciprocity of the relationship;
   • Impacts on the community, the University, and the scholarship of engagement; and,
   • Lessons learned and best practices developed that can contribute to the knowledge and practice of community engagement.
3. Support letter from a community partner involved in the initiative.

NOMINATION COMMITTEE AND SUBMISSION
Nominations are being sought from the University community and will be reviewed and selected by a committee representing the University Council on Engaged Scholarship and the Faculty Senate Committee on Outreach.

Nomination forms, with supporting nomination materials, should be submitted by email as one PDF document, to COEAwards@outreach.psu.edu.

DEADLINE
Deadline for submission is December 19, 2012. The award will be presented at the Faculty/Staff Awards Recognition Luncheon at The Nittany Lion Inn on March 25, 2013.

QUESTIONS
Questions concerning eligibility and nomination packet content should be directed to Careen Yarnal, Chair of the Selection Committee, at cmy122@psu.edu. Questions concerning the nomination process should be directed to Linda Saylor, at lms37@psu.edu or 814-863-8356.