The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has selected UALR as one of 115 U.S. colleges and universities for the foundation’s 2010 Community Engagement Classification.

UALR – known for its involvement in community issues such as race and ethnicity, criminal justice, and K-12 education – is the only Arkansas institution to be selected for this category since the classification’s inception.

To be selected, institutions must provide descriptions and examples of institutionalized practices of community engagement that showed alignment among mission, culture, leadership, resources, and practices.

“Community leaders, both public and private, have told us through the years that they want the university to help solve major community problems, and many times UALR has lent its expertise and resources to offer effective, community-driven solutions,” said Chancellor Joel E. Anderson.

“Some of the many issues in which UALR has been engaged include education, transportation, drinking water, wastewater, community revitalization, economic development, the shortage of jail space, the shortage of nurses, and bringing an engineering school to central Arkansas.”

“Through a classification that acknowledges significant commitment to and demonstration of community engagement, the Foundation encourages colleges and universities to become more deeply engaged, to improve teaching and learning, and to generate socially responsive knowledge to benefit communities,” said Carnegie President Anthony Bryk. “We are very pleased with the movement we are seeing in this direction.”

The “engagement” classification is an elective classification for which universities must apply. In the national Carnegie classifications into which all colleges and universities are placed, UALR is classified as a “Doctoral/Research” university.

Joni Lee, associate vice chancellor for University Advancement at UALR, said the Carnegie Foundation required the institutions selected to demonstrate how the university and its professors interact and partner with the community.

She said faculty members and their students are engaged in service learning projects and environmental issues throughout the year and interact with area business and community leaders through service on community advisory boards.

UALR’s Office of Community Engagement, a critical component of the university’s academic culture, opened in 2001 to facilitate the building of partnerships between UALR faculty, staff, and students with the community in ways that are mutually beneficial.

The Carnegie Foundation, through the work of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, developed the first typology of American colleges and universities in 1970 as a research tool to describe and represent the diversity of U.S. higher education. The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education continues to be used for a wide range of purposes by academic researchers, institutional personnel, policymakers, and others.