The Nashman Center provides support and advocacy to promote Community Engaged Scholarship. GW has a proud tradition of mutually beneficial partnerships between scholars and community members, through service-learning courses, participatory action research, professional practice and creative work.
Community Engagement describes the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national and global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.
The purpose of community engagement is the partnership of college and university knowledge and resources with those of the public and private sectors to enrich scholarship, research and creative activity; enhance curriculum, teaching and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues; and contribute to the public good.
– Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching –
As engaged scholars, we believe that community engagement in higher education is not an "add-on" but a fundamental part of the knowledge enterprise. It is both the purpose of scholarship and the path to scholarship. In all initiatives, we are collectively committed to the following standards of practice, established by a Nashman Center faculty advisory committee in 2017 and grounded in the Campus Compact Principles of Good Practice. (Heffernan, 2001)
