Four APLU Universities Selected as Finalists for 2024 C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship Award

Washington, DC – In recognition of their extraordinary community engagement initiatives, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) today announced that four of its member universities have been selected as regional winners of the 2024 W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award. As regional award winners, East Carolina University, the University of Minnesota, Oregon State University, and West Virginia University will compete for the national C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship Award, which will be announced at the 2024 APLU Annual Meeting in November.

Since 2007, APLU and the Engagement Scholarship Consortium, with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, have partnered to honor the engagement scholarship and partnerships of four-year public universities. The award recognizes programs that demonstrate how colleges and universities have redesigned their learning, discovery, and engagement missions to deepen their partnerships and achieve broader impacts in their communities. The national award is named for C. Peter Magrath, APLU president from 1992 to 2005.

“Congratulations to the regional winners of the Kellogg Community Engagement Scholarship Awards and exemplary projects,” said APLU President Mark Becker. “Community engagement is a critical part of public universities’ mission and we’re pleased to highlight the work of institutions that are instrumental to solving the most pressing challenges facing their communities through partnerships with other stakeholders.”

The community engagement awards also recognize universities with exemplary projects. The University of Alaska Fairbanks, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and Purdue University are receiving recognition for outstanding efforts in Community Engagement Scholarship. Both exemplary projects and Magrath Award finalists will be showcased at the 2024 Engagement Scholarship Consortium’s Annual Conference later this year.

A team of community engagement professionals from public research universities judged this round of the award. A second team will pick the national winner following presentations at the 2024 National Engagement Scholarship Conference.

The C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship Award includes a sculpture and a $20,000 prize. The three other regional winners will each receive a $5,000 prize to further their work.

Background on regional winners

East Carolina University
Aiming to address the mental health crisis facing people in rural areas of North Carolina, East Carolina University (ECU) launched a partnership with Contentnea Health in 2006 that increases access to critical primary health care and behavioral health services for underserved populations. Suicide remains one of the leading causes of death among those ages 10-65 in North Carolina, with higher rates in rural areas and significant unmet mental health needs stemming from economic stressors, geographical isolation, family dynamics, and health challenges. The university and its external partners have worked to deliver integrated behavioral health services within primary care visits for rural, underrepresented, and underinsured or uninsured patients and families in eastern North Carolina while providing 154 doctoral and master’s students with foundational clinical and research training with lasting impressions on standards of care that frame their careers. The partnership has supported more than 126,000 integrated behavioral health care encounters with patients through primary care clinics, dental clinics, on farms, and in school settings since its inception over 18 years ago. The effort provides behavioral health services on average to 7,000 people each year.

University of Minnesota
Recognizing the need to address challenges such as housing, poverty, economic stagnation, crime, and infrastructure challenges, the University of Minnesota launched the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) in 1968 to serve as an incubator of community-engaged and research-based partnerships and a resource to address urban and regional needs and concerns. Since its founding, CURA has worked to disseminate project outcomes through both academic and community venues, including academic journals, online publications, and public events and exhibits. Today, CURA is working with community partners to advance progress on economic vitality, demographic change, energy, education, housing, the environment, public safety, and land development. CURA’s work has produced an extensive network of external partners, with the center supporting 150 projects in 50 neighborhoods and cities involving 216 students, 32 university departments and programs, and 135 community and government organizations last year alone.  

Oregon State University
In response to a direct call from Oregon’s coastal communities, Oregon State University launched the Oregon Coastal Futures (OCF) project with community partners to increase the adaptive capacity and resilience of underserved and rural communities along the state’s seven coastal counties. OCF uses a collaborative and cross-disciplinary approach to consider social, economic, and ecological costs and benefits of adaptation strategies in underserved and rural communities affected by coastal hazards stemming from climate change and tsunamis. The project has been uniquely positioned to collect disparate social, economic, natural, and infrastructure data required to create nuanced equitable adaptation policies that examine how assets could best be protected and accessible to community members after a disaster.  The university-community team of students, postdoctoral scholars, and community partners regularly share the broader impacts of their work, including more than 30 presentations to Oregon coastal lawmakers and public interest groups, at academic and professional conferences, and at informal “Science on Tap” talks. The team also has produced more than 15 peer-reviewed publications, two websites, and multiple story maps. Additionally, the effort has provided deep expertise and experience to guide policy development and parameterize resilience performance metrics for Oregon’s coastal natural hazards. Most critically, the multi-disciplinary scientists leading the project gather with and act on input of coastal community members to improve results.

West Virginia University
Seeking to address community-identified challenges of depopulation, diminished health, lack of access to services, rising unemployment, and abandonment of properties in rural areas, West Virginia University (WVU) and West Virginia Community Development Hub launched the Fulcrum Project to support the long-term flourishing of communities across the state. The Fulcrum Project provides university resources to bridge gaps in skills, resources, and time and advance projects addressing pressing challenges facing rural communities. Faculty and students – from various academic colleges and WVU Extension – work collaboratively with community members to advance projects to address the most pressing needs of these communities. WVU faculty and students are matched with projects in the communities that best fit their areas of expertise and interest. Projects include downtown revitalization, beautification, building redevelopment, trail development, and projects like farmers markets. To date, the Fulcrum project has engaged more than 25 communities around 30 projects and facilitated more than $3 million in community investment.   

Background on the exemplary projects

The University of Alaska Fairbanks
Working with local community members to address the real-world implications of a changing climate, the University of Alaska Fairbanks launched the Fresh Eyes on Ice program to identify changes in ice patterns affecting rural communities.  River ice is central to life in Alaska’s remote communities, which rely on rivers for transportation and access to food. As the climate changes, rivers freeze later and break up earlier, disrupting long-held traditions and practices of village life around safety and food security. At the core of the program is a network of community-based monitoring teams made up of scientists, community members, teachers, and students who collect ice measurements and make observations throughout the winter season.  These observations and local insights provide essential data points for researchers, National Weather Service forecasters, and the communities themselves who experience catastrophic flooding during river breakup and dangerous ice conditions during river freeze-up. The National Weather Service Alaska Pacific River Forecast Center uses the observations to guide their river breakup modeling and forecasting, and the project has grown the number of ice monitoring sites used in their forecasting.  

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Seeking to address the most pressing challenges facing communities across the state, the University of Carolina at Charlotte launched its Community Innovation Incubator initiative in 2020. Each incubator brings together about a dozen grassroots leaders and researchers from several academic disciplines as peer experts, with support from UNC Charlotte students, for 10 months. Local stakeholders and researchers codesign a solution to a systemic challenge that community leaders have defined and mobilized around but have struggled to solve. Participants in the first incubator developed a blueprint for a for-profit, cooperative grocery store along Charlotte’s West Boulevard, a historically Black neighborhood that has not had a grocery store in more than 30 years. That project has since attracted nearly $6 million in public and private investment and a grocery store is scheduled to open early 2026. Following West Boulevard’s success, Bank of America invested $1 million for UNC Charlotte’s urbanCORE (Community-Oriented Research and Engagement) office to launch incubators on each of Charlotte’s five remaining economically disadvantaged “Corridors of Opportunity.” A second incubator is completing its work in summer 2024 with a third starting in fall 2024.  

Purdue University
Seeking to address disparities in STEM programming for children, Purdue University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Evaluation and Learning Research Center, local public schools, and community organizations developed and delivered veterinary STEM curriculum focused on keeping people and their animals healthy.  Led by Purdue, and supported by the Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) program of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the program was replicated and scaled at other universities, evolving into a veterinary superhero league, The League of VetaHumanz (www.VetaHumanz.org), where teams of veterinarians and students partner with community organizations/schools to deliver the curriculum to under-resourced children. Role models develop a sense of belonging to the community, communication skills, and intercultural responsiveness while addressing community needs for positive and nurturing STEM educational experiences that build self-efficacy and seed career aspirations for children. To date, over 200 Purdue veterinary students have participated, spending over 1,346 hours in service to the community in 2023 alone. Nationally, over 600 role models in 25 states have delivered in-person experiences through the effort.