The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has selected Barry University for its Community Engagement Classification.
Barry is one of only 83 U.S. colleges and universities classified for the first time as a community-engaged institution of higher education.
The Carnegie Foundation said Barry’s application for the classification “documented excellent alignment among campus mission, culture, leadership, resources, and practices that support dynamic and noteworthy community engagement, and it responded to the classification framework with both descriptions and examples of exemplary institutionalized practices of community engagement.”
In a letter to Barry’s Center for Community Service Initiatives (CCSI), the Carnegie Foundation added: “The application also documented evidence of community engagement in a coherent and compelling response to the framework’s inquiry.”
In all, 240 institutions were selected for Carnegie’s 2015 Community Engagement Classification. Of this number, 157 were selected for reclassification after being classified originally in 2006 or 2008. These 240 institutions join the 121 others that earned the classification during the 2010 selection process.
The Carnegie Foundation had invited colleges and universities with an institutional focus on community engagement to apply for the classification, first offered in 2006. Unlike the Foundation’s other classifications that rely on national data, this is an “elective” classification. Institutions participate voluntarily by submitting required documentation describing the nature and extent of their engagement with communities, from local to global.