What is the Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement?

Carnegie Classifications comprise a leading framework for describing institutional diversity in U.S. higher education. The Community Engagement Classification is intended to support a process for institutional learning and transformation, the outcome of which is an institution in which high-quality community engagement is deeply rooted and pervasive.

What is the Canadian Pilot Cohort?

The Canadian Pilot Cohort (CPC) began as a group of sixteen Canadian post-secondary institutions who agreed to undertake the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification to reflect on its fit in Canadian community engagement contexts. From 2019 to 2021, the CPC worked together as a learning community to explore the existing Classification, and in June of 2021, the twelve institutions that were available during the vote declared with unanimous assent that it was desirable to found and develop a Canadian version of the Classification. The few that were unable to attend the vote expressed their continuing commitment to the values that underpin the purpose of the Classification.

Learn more about the Canadian Pilot Cohort →

Canadian Pilot Cohort
Initial Convening: February 2019

Representatives of the Canadian Carnegie Classification Pilot cohort at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, February 2019.

A community-engaged campus seeks epistemic justice.

It is intrinsically interested in reciprocity and the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge.

It acts courageously, pushing its commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion to contemplate collaborative practices of knowledge creation, teaching, research and creative activity.

It remains accountable to shared values and principles, and in the Canadian context, pushes bravely into transformational change and Reconciliation.


Explore the guiding values and principles for the CPC