The University of Delaware (UD) has a long tradition of applying knowledge, creativity and civic commitment to the critical challenges facing communities in Delaware and around the world.
The Community Engagement Initiative (CEI) was established in 2016 and works to facilitate and strengthen UD’s identity and impact as an engaged research university and community partner throughout the state of Delaware and beyond.
Join us as we grow new partnerships, conduct research on critical societal priorities, work with community partners from all sectors, and embark on programs that enable our students to learn how to use the knowledge they gain to improve the communities in which they live, work and play.
Strategic Vision and Implementation
Our work is guided by the Civic Action Plan which is the University’s strategic vision for community engagement. Five goals guide our University-wide and community collaborations.
- Enhance university-wide capacity to support community engagement
- Increase support for engaged scholarship
- Expand opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students
- Launch new knowledge-based partnerships addressing critical social challenges.
- Increase recognition for UD as an engaged research university
A five-year strategic plan was adopted in 2022. In the 2024-2025 academic year, CEI leadership engaged the Council of Community Engagement in conversations to prioritize and evolve the plan’s objectives to ensure a shared commitment to implementing the plan through 2027. Read the updated plan
Leadership
Chief Community Engagement Officer Michael L. Vaughan holds the primary responsibility for fostering a culture of community engagement and engaged scholarship across the University. As CEI’s faculty director, he leads strategic efforts to catalyze campus-community partnerships and to showcase the exemplary work being done by UD faculty, staff, students in collaboration with community organizations.
Associate Director Leann Moore oversees CEI’s academic programs—including the four-year undergraduate Community Engagement Scholars course of study, a graduate certificate program and the Community Engagement Summer Scholars program—and is leading the charge to capture community engagement data across the University. With a University partner, she co-chairs the Council of Community Engagement.
Structure
CEI’s work is informed by a council composed of faculty and staff representatives from across the University’s research and public service centers and engagement initiatives, which are housed in the University’s colleges.
Learn more about the Council of Community Engagement
In collaboration with CEI leadership, three CEI faculty fellows respectively manage the graduate academic programs, develop training materials for faculty and lead the work of the Wilmington Partnership.
Since 2016, CEI has incubated five new knowledge-based community partnerships: the Partnership for Arts and Culture, the Partnership for Public Education, the Partnership for Healthy Communities, the Wilmington Partnership and the now-independent Newark Partnership. These partnerships were designed to mobilize university-wide capacity in areas of community priority.
Carnegie Classification
UD earned the Community Engagement Classification in 2015 from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which recognizes institutions of higher education for reciprocal collaboration with their larger communities.
Report on the findings and recommendations (May 2014)
Led by CEI, a steering committee composed of representatives from across the University convened beginning in 2023 to prepare an application for reclassification in 2025.