Penn received a national award for community engagement efforts across the University’s 12 schools.
The American Council on Education and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching recognized the University with the 2026 Carnegie Community Engagement Classification last month. Penn will hold the distinction through 2032 alongside over 230 other United States institutions of higher education.
Netter Center Associate Director Rita Hodges, a 2005 College graduate and 2024 Graduate School of Education graduate, led Penn’s application process. In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian, she said that it is “really exciting" to see how the classification encourages universities to reach “a higher standard" of “community engagement.”
“They’re ... embedding community engagement into the core academic mission — the research, teaching and learning of the University — as well as emphasizing reciprocal, mutually beneficial partnerships,” Hodges explained. “Those were clearly priorities in this year’s application in particular, and those have been priorities of the Netter Center and the University of Pennsylvania for a very long time.”
Hodges said that there is no limit on the number of universities that can receive the classification, as long as they fulfill a “rigorous criteria,” meaning that the award recognizes their work “in a collaborative, not competitive, way.”
Over 120 people at Penn worked to fulfill the application’s 10-step process, according to Hodges.
In the application, Penn highlighted the Netter Center for Community Partnerships’ work in mobilizing resources to provide support to West Philadelphia public schools, which then become University-Assisted Community Schools.
Civic House’s work was also highlighted within the application, with a large focus on student efforts toward community engagement.
RELATED:
Four Penn Medicine studies to be honored with national clinical research award
Penn Perelman School of Medicine receives $8 million gift to 'reinvent' curriculum
Executive Director Carrie Hutnick told the DP that the classification signals to prospective students that the University can help them “positively impact communities,” and demonstrates that Penn “thinks about West Philadelphia as our neighbors.”
The application also featured the implementation of University-wide programs, such as Provost John Jackson Jr.’s creation of an Advisory Committee on Community Engaged Scholarship in December 2023, which aims to advance mutually supportive partnerships between the Penn and Philadelphia.
Hodges expressed that community engagement at Penn is an “ongoing process.”
“We can look at incredible growth and development that’s happened at the University of Pennsylvania — to increasingly prioritize and build it into the academic mission, and really emphasize sustained, place-based, mutually beneficial partnerships — and then also recognize where more work can and should be done,” Hodges said.
The Carnegie Foundation commended Penn’s application for demonstrating “excellent alignment among campus mission, culture, leadership, resources, and practices that support dynamic and noteworthy community engagement.”
This distinction marks a renewal of Penn’s previously awarded classifications in 2015 and 2006.
