Community-Engaged Alliance invests in its partners through trainings, grants, and professional development. Through that support, administrators, faculty, staff, and community partners are able to make a difference for tens of thousands of community members and students each year.
Community-Engaged Alliance is the only organization in the state that works with all institutional levels (public, both large and small, independent, and two-year) as well as community partners. Our partnership is made up of institutions, organizations, and individuals dedicated to engaged teaching and learning, the kind of learning that stays with students as they transition into life after college.
Our Mission
Community-Engaged Alliance enables students to create positive social change by advancing the field of community engagement in higher education through support, education, and collaboration with partners.
Services to Meet the Mission
Grant and Loans
Community engagement grants of up to $11,000
Training and Events
Individual consultation, state-wide professional development conferences, opportunities to publish scholarly work, learning communities, and technical assistance
Resources and Recognition
Access to journal editors and a nation-wide network of subject matter experts, electronic archives, the freshest news from the field, and a state-wide recognition program for students, faculty, staff, community partners, and institutions.
Mission In Action
Advocate
We convene with, support, and promote institutions of higher education that are leveraging their knowledge, resources, and power for the public good.
Implement
We provide partnership benefits directly to faculty and staff to make community engagement part of their courses, programs and projects, and part of the culture of campus life.
Improve
We believe in the power of working together to support future leaders who push the status quo and who use their skills to create vibrant communities.
Our Vision
As leaders in the field of community engagement, our vision is one where students are empowered to make the world a better place.
Our History: A three-decade evolution
In 1993, as students started yearning for connections between their academic life and volunteer work, a group of six university and college presidents started conversations about “[their] collective sense that higher education needed to focus more directly on making a difference in our communities and neighborhoods” -Edward A. Malloy, University of Notre Dame, Founding Board Member.
These discussions led to the creation of Indiana Campus Compact. Indiana Campus Compact would go on to serve nearly thirty years as the only statewide organization to work with institutions at every level (large and small public, private, and two-year) in providing the professional development, training, funding, and support, which create sustainable curricular and co-curricular programs, partnerships, and changes within the community and among the student population. These changes made a difference for hundreds of thousands of community members and provided students with the kind of learning that helps them transition into becoming civic leaders beyond graduation.
Over the course of 29 years, we evolved along with the field of community engagement, adapting programs and support for partners to better answer the call for positive social change within communities and beyond. This adaptability, this commitment to moving the field forward for the benefit of the common good, has allowed us to take a step back and assess our organization and evaluate how to continue providing support to our partners’ place-based community engagement and service-learning work. This assessment and evaluation led us to our next step, “Envisioning A New Future.”
Envisioning a New Future is the culmination of changes identified by our assessment and evaluation, which includes stepping away from the Campus Compact brand, refining our mission and vision, and launching our next strategic plan. These changes will ensure that our organization is able to continue supporting, encouraging, and working alongside our partners to create the kind of programs and partnerships that lead to positive social change and ensure students graduate with the skills and knowledge to be not only leaders in their chosen fields, but also civic leaders in the community.
Community-Engaged Alliance will continue to move the field forward as we promote critical service-learning and community engagement, work with our partners to foster the climate for authentic community engagement, and increase student learning and success for years to come. We invite you to learn more as you browse our mission, vision, and history.
Through the Ages
Learn more about our story by reviewing the 20th Anniversary timeline, made in 2013.