The Elective Classification For Community Engagement

Cathy Avila-Linn

Contact:
cathy.avilalinn@gmail.com
www.cathyavilalinn.com

Cathy Avila-Linn is an accomplished consultant, facilitator, and leadership coach. She brings to this role over 20 years of experience in the field of community engagement and over 15 years of experience designing and facilitating strategic planning processes and program reviews. Cathy can support your institution’s self-assessment process by:

• Designing a collaborative, participatory process that engages your campus team, providing guidance, consultation, and pacing throughout;
• Advising campus leadership on developing the assessment team by providing input on the roles and responsibilities of team members;
• Facilitating workshops on specific sections of the application framework;
• Sharing resources that support data collection, reflection, discussion, learning, and action;
• Supporting your team in collecting, synthesizing, and prioritizing large amounts of ideas, information, goals, and strategies in support of a larger vision;
• Aiding  the creation of a system to track and promote decisions and evidence-based practices identified or created throughout the process;
• Working with your team to analyze input from stakeholders and identify areas for growth, action,  and institutional transformation;
• Assisting team members in the preparation of application narratives by providing guidance, samples, and feedback; or
• Guiding your team in post-assessment reflection, examination, and action planning.

Rooted in social justice, Cathy actively models participatory facilitation practices designed to promote inclusive environments which respect and appreciate multiple intelligences, diverse backgrounds, and lifestyles. Cathy’s clients describe her as warm, open, and insightful. Her work style exemplifies intention, transparency, collaboration, and inclusivity.

Alan Bloomgarden

Contact:
abloomga@gmail.com

Alan H. Bloomgarden is currently Director of Foundation and Government Grants at Holyoke Community College, following his prior role as Inaugural Director of Experiential Learning at Elms College. Alan has provided professional development and consulting to multiple institutions focusing on community engagement center/program reviews, Carnegie Community Engagement Classification planning, liberal arts colleges and community engagement, campus-community partnerships and impacts, faculty development/tenure and promotion policies, and strategies to link community-engaged learning, leadership development, DEI priorities, and work/career preparation and success strategies for first generation, low income and underrepresented students and faculty.

As Director of Community Engagement at Mount Holyoke College from 2008-2019, he grew the Community-Based Learning Program to involve over 400 students annually in more than 25 community-engaged courses, internships, and independent studies. His curriculum and courses on social action for students pursuing year-long, capacity-building internships with community organizations won recognition from the national Excelencía in Education: What Works for Latino Students organization as exemplary for advancing Latinx student college access and success. He led Mount Holyoke to successfully attain the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification in 2015.

Alan served from 1996-2008 as Director of Faculty Grants and Government/Community Relations at Smith College, where he worked to advance faculty scholarship, curricular innovation and outreach programming. Alan has a doctorate in higher education leadership and policy from UMass Amherst, an MPhil in Peace Studies from the University of Bradford (UK), and a B.A. in International Relations from Bucknell University. Alan was a Governor’s appointee to the 2012 Massachusetts Special Commission on Civic Engagement and Learning, and co-founded Leadership Pioneer Valley, a regional community leadership program. He serves on New England Public Media’s Latino Advisory Board, and as co-editor for the International Journal of Research on Community Engagement and Service Learning.

Sarah Beth Dempsey

Contact:
sdd4@stmarys-ca.edu
LinkedIn

Sarah Beth Dempsey, EdD, is a practitioner-scholar with nearly 20 years of experience in higher education. Since 2013, she has worked at Saint Mary’s College of California where she is currently the Director for Community Engaged Learning and Research in the Catholic Institute for Lasallian Social Action (CILSA), a center for social justice programs and education, and an adjunct assistant professor. She facilitates CE faculty development training sessions and supports faculty with course design, student learning outcomes, community partnership processes, and reflection activities. Additionally, she establishes formal community partner agreements in the form of memoranda of understanding (MOUs) between the College and nonprofits and schools for students’ service experiences and AmeriCorps VISTA capacity-building projects addressing issues of poverty and education.  Her research focuses on assessment of CE courses and participant engagement.  Prior to working at SMC, she worked in the University of California (UC) system in various academic affairs units.

Brian Gogan

Contact:
brian.gogan@wmich.edu

Dr. Brian Gogan successfully led Western Michigan University’s efforts to reclassify as a Carnegie Community Engaged Campus in 2020. As part of these efforts, Gogan chaired two 20+member teams and was lead author of WMU’s reclassification application, which documented over 1.34 million hours of community-engagement initiatives with more than 1,500 community organizations.

Gogan, who is an Associate Professor of English, directs WMU’s first-year writing program and regularly teaches professional writing courses with service-learning components. Gogan holds a B.A. in English from Xavier University, a M.A. in British and American Literature from Marquette University, and a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Writing from Virginia Tech.

Patrick Green

Contact:
pgreen@luc.edu

Patrick M. Green, EdD, is the Executive Director of the Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship (CELTS), and a Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Loyola University Chicago. He teaches a variety of experiential learning courses, including community-based learning (service-learning), academic internships, global service-learning, and undergraduate research, as well as graduate courses in the Higher Education Program. Dr. Green’s expertise and skills are focused on high-impact learning, community-based learning, experiential learning and pedagogies, course design for engagement, critical reflection, engaged teaching and learning, community partnerships, and organizational development and change leadership for community engagement. He has served as a consultant for multiple institutions of higher education, as well as keynote speaker and program reviewer to enhance organizational change and engage the fields of community engagement and higher education. He is coeditor of Re-conceptualizing Faculty Development in Service-Learning/Community Engagement: Exploring Intersections, Frameworks, and Models of Practice (Stylus Publishing, 2018), Crossing Boundaries: Tension and Transformation in International Service-Learning (Stylus Publishing, 2014), Guest Editor of Metropolitan Universities Journal special issue on faith and community engagement (December, 2020), and Guest Editor of Experiential Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (ELTHE, November 2021 and May 2022 forthcoming). Dr. Green serves as a Scholar-in-Residence with the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSCLE), an Engaged Scholar with the National Society of Experiential Education (NSEE), and an Engaged Scholar with National Campus Compact.

Suchitra Gururaj

Contact:
sgururajconsulting@gmail.com
LinkedIn

Suchitra Gururaj, Ph.D. is a practitioner-scholar of community engagement and its intersections with diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice, and government and municipal affairs. Dr. Gururaj co-led a successful Carnegie application by The University of Texas at Austin, a decentralized research flagship with 18 colleges and schools and numerous advisory and development boards. For the last 11 years, Dr. Gururaj has served as Assistant Vice President for Community and Economic Engagement at UT-Austin, in which role she has led the strategic vision, programming, and assessment around student-, faculty-, and community-facing programming from both on- and off-campus locations. A clinical faculty member and diversity trainer, Dr. Gururaj also develops resources for faculty, students, staff, and community partners to enter into mutually beneficial relationships. The co-creator of UT-Austin’s Front Porch Gatherings and former assessment lead for the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, she prioritizes storytelling in her work. Dr. Gururaj is also an executive board member for the Austin Economic Development Corporation, the Community Advancement Network of Austin, and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, through which she maintains ongoing conversations with community residents, city leaders, urban planners, and leaders across the higher education sector. She represents UT-Austin in The Research University Civic Engagement Network (TRUCEN) convening of Campus Compact. A former staff member at Georgia Tech, the University of Chicago, and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, she has a wide purview of the diverse institutions in higher education. She holds degrees in English from Yale University and the University of Chicago, and earned a doctorate in education from UT-Austin.

Terry Hockenbrough

Contact:
imagineleadconsulting@gmail.com
214.697.8638

Dr. Terry Hockenbrough is an experienced Higher Education professional, and veteran of the Carnegie Foundation Classification process. Under her leadership, Collin College, a public community college district in Texas, was twice awarded the Carnegie Community Engagement designation. She served as Doctorate Faculty, Service Learning Director, and conference and workshop educator for sixteen years.  As a dedicated community partner, she facilitated the award winning Service Learning Program at Collin College for fourteen years. As part of the Program Review Committee for the college, she facilitated training for the assessment process, and was a mentor to nine institutional programs. She holds a Ph.D. from UT Dallas, and eighteen professional certifications including: Outcomes-Based Assessment; International Coach Certifications in Transformational Leadership, Workplace Dynamics, Abundant Life, and Career Development; (MBTI); Strengths Quest; International Leadership Development; Global Career Development; and Conflict and Mediation.  She currently serves as President of the Collin County Homeless Coalition, and on community committees including the McKinney Mayor’s Taskforce on Homelessness.

Christy Kayser

Contact:
christy.kayser@usm.edu

Christy Kayser serves as director of the Center for Community Engagement at The University of Southern Mississippi, where her office oversees service-learning and other mutually beneficial initiatives related to community-engaged teaching, learning, and research. She has worked with campus-community partnerships in higher education for nearly 14 years, starting with Louisiana State University’s service-learning office in 2008 before transitioning in 2014 to her current role. She has twice facilitated successful applications for the Carnegie Foundation’s Elective Community Engagement Classification, once as a first-time applicant at LSU and again for the reclassification at USM in 2020.

Kayser’s expertise includes working with and coordinating both curricular and co-curricular service at public, four-year, doctoral Research 1 institutions in the South. She possesses unique insight into challenges faced by institutions of different size (LSU= 30K+, USM= 13K) with different levels of institutionalized community engagement and varying scopes of community engagement. Her knowledge base includes land, sea, and space grant institutions as well as regional campuses. Areas of interest include media communications, institutional infrastructure, campus-community partnerships, leadership through civic engagement, and data tracking.

Richard Kinsley

Contact:
dick.kinsley@gmail.com
740.403.2943

Having recently completed 25 years as Executive Director of Ohio Campus Compact, Richard Kinsley, B.S., M.Ed., has extensive experience working in K-12 and higher education as a co-faculty member, curriculum specialist, trainer, evaluator, and administrator in the field of service-learning and experiential education. He has presented over 100 trainings and workshop presentations to faculty and staff, students, and community partners in the areas of service learning 101 and advanced service-learning, community partnership development, assessment of service-learning and community service, and integrating service-learning into course syllabi across disciplines. He has assisted in the establishment and development of offices of community service and civic engagement with two-year, four-year public and private colleges and universities in Ohio and regionally and consulted with many of these campuses to assess their general operations, program effectiveness and to ascertain how to best advance their work.

Richard has developed and managed both higher education and private foundation service-learning and other civic engagement grants, including the co-development of two nationally recognized programs: an AmeriCorps VISTA program and Pay It Forward (PIF), a college course-based student philanthropy program. Since its inception in 2010, PIF has engaged nearly 4,500 college students in over 215 courses across 40 campuses and invested over $700,000 in 460 community nonprofits, with students providing over 71,500 total volunteer hours.

As Executive Director of Ohio Campus Compact, Richard managed staff and programs that engaged and supported its member campuses in public and community service to build sustainable campus/community partnerships, educate students for active citizenship, and improve the social and economic well-being of local communities. Under my leadership, Ohio Campus Compact has grown its membership to 40 Ohio colleges and universities, expanded grant programs for faculty, students, and community organizations, and strengthened technical assistance and training services.

Brian Kurisky

Contact:
bkurisky@gmail.com

Dr. Brian Kurisky serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Collaborative Education in the Division of Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement on Rutgers University’s main campus in New Brunswick. In this position, Brian oversees co-curricular engagement, community engagement connections, and the Bonner Leaders program on the campus.  He also aids Academic Affairs in embedding engagement in course curriculum.

Prior to this position, Brian served as the inaugural Executive Director for Wesleyan Engaged: Civic Engagement and Service Learning at Virginia Wesleyan University. While in this position, he started the Bonner Leaders program, established an engagement tracking system, increased course engagement, and led the institution to receive the 2020 Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement. He also served as the VWU Representative to the Volunteer Hampton Roads Board and as a SACS-COC evaluator.

Dr. Kurisky has a PhD in Higher Education Leadership from Old Dominion University, where his dissertation examined educational programs for alumni who serve as advisors to social organizations to determine if such programs were educating these advisors in helping current undergraduate students. During his graduate studies, Brian served as a graduate researcher for the Vice Provost for Planning and Institutional Effectiveness in the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment working on Old Dominion University’s SACS-COC 2012 reaccreditation process.

Since obtaining his doctorate, Dr. Kurisky has served as a consultant to Social Greek Lettered Fraternities regarding their educational programs for alumni volunteers and as a SACS-COC consultant in reviewing institutions’ Five-Year and Reaccreditation reports to provide feedback prior to submission.

Judith Liu

Contact:
liuusd@sandiego.edu

Judith Liu, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of San Diego, was actively involved her entire career with the Mulvaney Center for Community, Awareness and Social Action.  As the faculty liaison, she mentored faculty, students, and staff on curricular and co-curricular community engagement initiatives, strengthened campus/community partnerships, and coordinated a San Diego regional network of local colleges and university on community engagement.  She has presented at national, regional, and local conferences and has served as a consultant for embedding community service-learning and community engagement into the curriculum.

Judith has publications that focus on creating equitable community partnerships (2006, 2011), incorporating community engagement into the curriculum (2010, 2014), civic engagement (2010), anchor institutions (2020), and the transformative nature of community engagement (2016).

Jessica Mann

Contact:
jmannconsultingllc@gmail.com
www.jmannconsulting.com

Dr. Jessica Mann has spent her career in higher education supporting the institutionalization of community engagement.  She currently serves as the Assistant Vice President for Community Engagement at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  In this role she oversees the Center for Community-Engaged Teaching and Research, which encompasses extra-curricular, co-curricular, and academic community engagement. Dr. Mann is also a seasoned consultant and trainer who has worked with organizations to improve their policies and procedures, conduct assessments and evaluations, create strategic and long-term vision plans, and enhance their overall organizational cultures.

Dennis McCunney

Contact:
mccunneyw@ecu.edu
LinkedIn

Dennis McCunney, Ph.D. serves as director of intercultural affairs at East Carolina University and adjunct faculty member in political science. He started at ECU in 2012 as director of the Volunteer and Service-Learning Center where he grew the center’s scope to include social justice as an integrated part of leadership development and civic engagement. Dr. McCunney served on ECU’s Carnegie Classification team in 2015.

He has presented his research in various arenas, including the Global Service-Learning Summit, Leadership Educators Institute, and the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement. Recent publications include articles in AAC&U’s Diversity & Democracy (special issue on undergraduate public health), Metropolitan Universities Journal and Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education.

He earned his doctorate in higher education administration from Morgan State University, and his dissertation focus was on the formation of student culture around civic engagement, leadership, and activism.

His professional and research interests include public service and leadership development, organizational development, intercultural / global learning, and campus-community partnerships. He serves on the leadership teams for the NASPA Spirituality and Religion KC and the Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative.

Education:

• Morgan State University, Ph.D., Higher Education Administration
• Boston College, M.Div.
• Loyola University Maryland, B.A., Philosophy and Biology

Areas of Expertise:

• Connections between leadership, civic engagement, and intercultural learning
• Regional public higher education
• Faith-based institutions
• Community-engaged global learning

Joi Phillips

Contact:
jnphillips@admin.fsu.edu

Dr. Joi N. Phillips currently serves as the Director of Florida State University’s Center for Leadership & Social Change, which houses the offices of Community Rooted Engagement (CoRE) and Representation, Inclusion and Student Equity (RISE). Dr. Phillips is a very proud alumna of the University of Florida (Go Gators!) and got her start at the center as a graduate assistant at the then-Center for Civic Education and Service. After completing her master’s degree, Dr. Phillips became the coordinator for the Center’s America Reads Mentoring Program while completing doctoral work in the Educational Policy and Evaluation program in the College of Education. Dr. Phillips’ work centers on the relationship between policy and civic participation and focuses on how communities and higher education institutions develop and sustain partnerships. Dr. Phillips is a proud wife and mother of two who enjoys reading fiction novels and trying new recipes and kitchen gadgets. She is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

Jennifer Pigza

Contact:
jpigza@stmarys-ca.edu
LinkedIn

Jennifer M. Pigza, Ph.D., is the director of the Catholic Institute for Lasallian Social Action (CILSA) and adjunct assistant professor of leadership at Saint Mary’s College of California. CILSA is an academic unit reporting to the Provost; it leads implementation of community engagement courses for the undergraduate core curriculum, offers community-based internships and summer fellowships, manages an Americorps program serving pre-school children, and facilitates a VISTA program serving multiple California campuses. Jennifer facilitates organizational strategic planning, theory-of-change development, faculty and staff formation for community engagement, and equity-based practices in teaching and leading. Jennifer’s publications focus on leadership development through service learning (2016), women and leadership development (2021), teaching community-based research (2016), and student learning and development through critical reflection (2010). She serves on the national leadership team for the Place-Based Justice Network and is newly appointed to the editorial board for the Michigan Journal for Community Service Learning.

Matthew Roy

Contact:
MRoy@UMassd.edu
401-835-2871

Dr. Matthew Roy is Assistant Vice Chancellor for Career and Civic Engagement at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He is also Director of the Leduc Center for Civic Engagement and a Professor of Management.

He has twice chaired successful Carnegie Community Engagement Classification committees at UMass Dartmouth.  He has also provided consulting services for colleges and universities who have applied for the Carnegie classification and consulted with fortune 500 companies in the fields of human resource management, leadership, and team building.

Matt is a champion for education as a means to individual fulfillment, economic development, and community enrichment. He is the co-developer of a series of teaching modules used to train faculty in best practices in service-learning. The recipient of the University of Massachusetts President’s Award for Public Service and the UMass Dartmouth Teacher of the Year award are testimonies to his commitment to excellence in teaching, research, and public service. He presently serves on the Board of Directors of 8 non-profit organizations.

Matt is an avid Boston sports fan, reader, and runner. You may see him running along the shoreline in Tiverton, RI where he lives with his two sons, Benjamin and Simon.

Rian Satterwhite

Contact:
rian.satterwhite@unlv.edu
LinkedIn

Rian Satterwhite, M.Ed., serves as Director of the Office of Service Learning & Leadership at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. UNLV is a “Very High Research” public university with 30,000+ students and maintains MSI/HSI/AANAPISI designations. His office is responsible for service-learning, co-curricular service and civic engagement, voter and democratic engagement, leadership development, scholar programs for vulnerable and minoritized student populations, and student basic needs. He also serves as Teaching Faculty for Claremont Lincoln University in the Organizational Leadership and Sustainability Leadership graduate programs.

Experience with the classification:
Rian has responsibilities for service-learning pedagogy development, approval, and reporting across UNLV and serves as a core member of the UNLV Carnegie Elective Classification Committee and the UNLV Community Engagement Council. He has experience with designing institutional frameworks, large-scale curriculum reviews, collaboratively building new data sets, curriculum development and course design, revising academic programs, and in writing the 2020 elective classification application.

Rian also contributed to the creation of the Elective Classification in Leadership for Public Purpose.

Specializations:

• Service-Learning
• Curricular and co-curricular community engagement
• Nonprofit partnerships
• Leadership development through community engagement
• Voter & democratic engagement
• Student basic needs

Sandra Sgoutas-Emch

Contact:
emch@sandiego.edu

Dr. Sgoutas-Emch’s portfolio stems over 30 years in higher education both in and out of the classroom. She has implemented community engagement (CE) projects that focus on developing reciprocal, democratic and engaging partnerships that meet the educational goals for students.  As a faculty liaison to the Center for Community Awareness and Social Action at the University of San Diego (USD), Sandra works as a consultant to other faculty in building their projects and on grant teams implementing CE. Sandra has been instrumental in the development of frameworks for the university and community partnerships around CE such as a social model for change and an institution-wide rubric to measure CE. Her experience as the Director of USD’s Center for Educational Excellence included developing workshops, consulting with individual faculty on their teaching, working with departments and schools on curriculum, creating assessments at all levels, and developing diversity and inclusion policies. Sandra has published a number of papers and chapters focused on community engagement as well as faculty development and institutional frameworks. Most recently, she has been a scholar-in residence and communities of practice facilitator for Campus Compact on faculty development and community engagement and is co-leading USD’s Carnegie re-classification efforts.

Justin Sipes

Contact:
justin.m.sipes@gmail.com

Dr. Justin Sipes is the Acting Director of the Center for Community-Based Learning at the University of North Florida (UNF). In this role, he collaborates with others throughout the institution to enhance the breadth and depth of community engagement activities, monitors progress on community engagement efforts, and prepares the campus for its Carnegie Elective Community Engagement Classification process; a distinction it received in 2010 and 2020.

Justin received his doctorate from UNF in Educational Leadership with a focus on higher education. His dissertation was on the pre-college expectations of first-generation college students. He has almost two decades of experience in higher education in both in academic and student affairs (community engagement, faculty development, fraternity & sorority life, student organizations, housing and residence life, and leadership programs). Primarily, his work is in public higher education, particularly at regional comprehensive institutions.

Within the community engagement realm, Justin is a co-facilitator of a Campus Compact community of practice on Supporting Engaged Faculty Development and the UNF campus lead for the IARSLCE Alliance. Additionally, he is an executive committee member and assessment chair of the Gulf-South Summit, a regional community engagement and a service-learning organization.

Shalom Staub

Contact:
shalom.staub@gmail.com
LinkedIn

Shalom Staub, Ph.D. is an experienced consultant and facilitator who has dedicated over 40 years of his career to working in higher education, government, and the nonprofit sector to catalyze and navigate organizational change. Since 2018, he has served as the Director of UCLA’s Center for Community Engagement, advancing community-engaged teaching and learning across the undergraduate curriculum. He leads UCLA’s community engagement strategic priority-level efforts, including catalyzing efforts to recognize community-engaged scholarship in UCLA’s academic personnel review and introducing Collaboratory to track and assess community partnerships.

Prior to joining UCLA, Staub served as Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Civic Engagement at Dickinson College. Over 16 years, he launched Dickinson’s service-learning curricular initiative, established an “engaged department” initiative, and worked with faculty to integrate civic learning and community engagement across the curriculum. He led civic engagement strategic planning and implementation, which culminated in institutional restructuring to bring curricular and co-curricular community engagement under a new Center for Civic Learning and Action. His collaborative leadership created the institutional conditions that enabled Dickinson to receive its first-time Carnegie Community Engagement Classification in 2020.

Staub’s experience in achieving and retaining Carnegie Classification status is grounded in his work both at a liberal arts college and a leading U.S. research university. He is adept at engaging faculty and promoting shared governance processes to embed community engagement into the core academic work of the institution. He also has a keen interest in understanding and assessing community partners’ perspectives and how to effectively build processes and structures to support reciprocally valuable and equitable university-community partnerships.

Julia Vargas

Contact:
Julia.Vargas@rockhurst.edu

Dr. Julia Vargas serves as the Director for the Center for Service Learning for Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri. In this position, she connects Rockhurst faculty and students to the community through service-learning courses and campus-wide community service programs.  Prior to her current position, Julia worked for 12 years in the nonprofit sector, often as the community partner for service-learning courses. Julia has led Rockhurst University through the Carnegie Community Engagement Elective Classification in 2010 and 2020.  She has worked with small/ medium sized colleges and universities to implement service-learning programs. Areas of expertise include: service-learning, program development, strategic planning, community engagement, partnerships and program evaluation.