Davidson College Recognized With Carnegie Foundation Community Engagement Classification

With Hinds Feet Farm, students and faculty, as part of a community engaged learning course, collaborate to develop therapeutic art classes for those who’ve suffered from traumatic brain injuries.

Businesses start and thrive at the Jay Hurt Hub for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The college incubator offers space, as well as student, staff and faculty resources to help entrepreneurs launch and grow their products and services while boosting the regional economy.

Davidson’s collaboration with residents around the area’s most pressing issues, from transportation to affordable housing to education, health care, and food security has resulted in longstanding, solution-seeking partnerships. 

These are among the many examples of why the Carnegie Foundation has awarded the college with its 2026 elective community engagement designation. It’s an honor first bestowed on Davidson in 2020 and the foundation recently announced that it’s been renewed for the next six years.

Davidson is one of 277 institutions to receive the designation, which is awarded through the foundation’s Advancement of Teaching and the American Council on Education.

The foundation said campuses included have strengthened their communities while addressing “urgent societal challenges — work your institution has advanced with clarity and distinction.” 

Davidson, it said, has demonstrated an outstanding alignment of “campus mission, culture, leadership, resources, and practices that support dynamic and noteworthy community engagement.”

The classification is valid until 2032. 

“This reflects the values that guide us at Davidson: learning from and serving with communities, and leadership for the public good,” said Stacey Riemer, managing director of the college’s Institute for Public Good and director of the Center for Civic Engagement “The collective efforts and collaboration of faculty, students, staff, and community partners make this work possible.”

More Than Service

Community engagement involves more than service projects. It encompasses partnerships between the college and the public and private sectors to bolster research and scholarship and prepare students to become engaged citizens with a strong sense of civic responsibility.

A multitude of Davidson’s programs include community engagement. 

Bonner Scholars’ spring break trips to Charleston, South Carolina, have included partnerships with state and non-profits that had them working in a food bank and mitigating hurricane damage in fragile marshlands. 

The Center for Civic Engagement serves as the hub for partnership programs and project development in this area, including supporting faculty with their community-engaged scholarship.

Education is a top priority, and Davidson contributes significantly to its pursuit.

Brittany Murray, Malcolm O. Partin assistant professor of educational studies and political science, teaches courses in education policy with projects such as studying school board actions and decision making. 

Since 2005, the college has offered the Brenda H. Tapia Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools program for children from kindergarten through eighth grade. Davidson students work as Servant Leader Interns with a goal of fostering a love of reading and learning in the children.

The program, held at the Ada Jenkins Center, takes a holistic approach that includes academic enrichment, family involvement, leadership, nutrition, health and mental health. 

In 2024, the Davidson College Summer Promise Program debuted. It’s a free, week-long residential program for rising ninth graders from underrepresented communities. Students attend classes taught by Davidson faculty and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teachers and participate in a variety of activities on campus.

It’s designed to increase confidence, readiness and enthusiasm for high school and college.

Recent Social, Economic, Research Initiatives

Much has happened in the six years since Davidson received its first community engagement classification.

In 2020 the college launched the Community Research Fellows program. This brings students, faculty, staff, and community leaders together to co-create and conduct research that addresses local needs. Through projects such as the North Mecklenburg Needs Assessment and follow-up studies, the program has helped identify and elevate issues related to affordable housing, healthcare access, food security, transportation, and workforce development in north Mecklenburg County communities. An online data dashboard offers community partners its research findings to support local decision-making and advocacy efforts.

Also in 2020, the college started the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative, to foster thoughtful, respectful dialogue in a polarized society. The eight-hour, two-day training offers participants skills to improve their ability to listen and deliberate in classrooms and the community. 

A 2023 economic impact study commissioned by the college showed that Davidson generates about $490 million through creating jobs, supporting local businesses and taxes. The report also concluded that students, faculty and staff contributed more than 73,000 hours of service a year.

And last year, the college launched the Institute for Public Good to help cultivate students who will become effective, ethical leaders and citizens. Earlier this month, the institute received a $4 million federal grant to create a Deliberative Citizenship Network across 100 colleges and universities. 

“Our mission is leadership and service,” President Doug Hicks ’90 said in a letter included in the Carnegie Foundation application. “We are educating for it, preparing students to pursue it, contributing to it and clarifying what it is in an ever-more complex world. 

“Through our students, our graduates and our commitments as an institution, we fulfill that mission with the goal of improving the lives of our neighbors next door and around the globe.”