News releases

January 12, 2026

UW recognized across all campuses with Carnegie Foundation Community Engagement reclassification

The University of Washington has again earned a prestigious recognition for the impact and importance of the connections faculty, students and staff have with local, regional and global communities.

All three UW campuses were recognized with the Carnegie Foundation Community Engagement reclassification, placing the university among 277 peer institutions nationwide. Officials with the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, who award the designation, noted that these universities are deepening partnerships, centering community assets and addressing urgent societal challenges with clarity and distinction.

“This Carnegie reclassification affirms what I’ve long believed about the role of public universities: our work has to be rooted in partnership and focused on impact for all people,” said UW President Robert J. Jones. “Community engagement isn’t peripheral to our mission — it’s central to how we move the UW forward in service of the greater good. Being recognized again across all three campuses is a real point of pride and speaks to the shared commitment across the UW to working alongside our communities to drive meaningful change.”

The UW’s three campuses were first recognized in 2020 by the Carnegie Foundation as community-engaged campuses. This reclassification is an external acknowledgement of the growing scale and quality of community-engaged work, built on a decades-long foundation. In recent years, the UW has strengthened relationships, expanded partnerships, and launched a tri-campus effort — funded in 2022 by a $3.8 million donation — to strengthen community engagement practices across campuses, develop shared definitions of community engagement, and build a digital clearinghouse to track and facilitate community work. Much of that work is documented on the Community Engagement Knowledge Hub, a website with resources for the UW and community partners.

The UW works with more than 700 different community organizations, including nonprofit providers of health care and other services, local and regional governments, school districts, tribal nations, and small businesses as well as large multinational companies.

The Carnegie Classification for the UW in Seattle recognizes the meaningful and sustained work of faculty, staff and students to engage with the community in genuine partnership, said Ed Taylor, vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs.

“These relationships enable students to take up community-informed, academically rigorous work in our civic spaces, leading to a more sophisticated understanding of the complex problems facing society,” Taylor said. “We are honored and humbled by this recognition of our work so far and inspired to continue to deepen our focus on addressing the most pressing needs of our campus and broader community. Sustaining these outcomes at scale requires dedicated infrastructure, student support, and long-term investment from partners.”

For example, via Riverways Education Partnerships, the UW works with rural and tribal schools statewide. These programs are designed to enrich existing K-12 education, enhance STEM learning and provide opportunities for children in those schools to learn about higher education. UW undergraduates support curriculums, connect with students in communities, all while being guided by UW faculty and staff.

“Our programs work with all different grade levels at various tribal nations here in Washington state, which I think is cool and unique,” said Richard Alejandro Parra, who runs the program and is assistant director of Rural and Tribal Partnerships in the UW Community Engagement & Leadership Education Center.

The Center is a leading coordinator at the UW for community-engaged learning, partnership development and student civic leadership. Each year, it supports thousands of students and hundreds of collaborations with community-based organizations and faculty to strengthen community-driven solutions to complex societal challenges.

“We have students that we’ve worked with since they were fifth graders, and we engage with them throughout their entire K-12 journey,” Parra said. “After graduating, some of those students have come to UW, and they return to their communities to mentor younger students through our programs.”

When the Latino Educational Training Institute in Snohomish County was looking to expand its capacity to serve recent immigrants, leaders of the small nonprofit reached out to UW Bothell. During more than a decade of collaboration, a symbiotic relationship between LETI and the UW has blossomed, providing critical resources to support LETI’s growth and giving UW students from Bothell and Seattle real-world experience.

This year, more than 40 UW students are engaged in work-study and research at LETI, providing services in education, health and more.

“The community engagement effort that they have is one of the best that I have seen,” said Rosario Reyes, LETI’s founder and president. “I wish other schools would emulate it.”

Employers, like LETI, view UW Bothell as a strong partner in regional workforce development, said UW Bothell Chancellor Kristin G. Esterberg.

UW Bothell faculty and students collaborate with hundreds of community organizations locally and globally. Since first gaining the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, UW Bothell’s commitment to collaboration has deepened. It is underpinned by new policies such as the addition of an undergraduate learning goal focused on community engagement and faculty legislation supporting community-engaged scholarship.

“We also engage with hundreds of nonprofit agencies, local governments and grassroots organizations year-round,” Esterberg said. “This reclassification by the Carnegie Foundation recognizes our community engagement and reinforces the value of this work.”

UW Tacoma is a vital part of building the future for the city of Tacoma, said Jacques Colon, the director of the city’s Equity, Strategy, and Human Rights office. In addition to bolstering the redevelopment of the city’s downtown by expanding and modernizing the university’s campus, UW Tacoma also contributes to economic development by training a desirable and highly skilled workforce. That, in turn, attracts more business to the area.

“If we can make that kind of synergy work, that’s exactly the kind of relationship that has the ability to set a trajectory for a city long term, over a decade,” Colon said. “To me, that’s incredibly exciting,”

That kind of community engagement is at the heart of UW Tacoma’s mission and the key to a more prosperous future for the region, said UW Tacoma Chancellor Sheila Edwards Lange.

UW Tacoma has established itself as one of the region’s most community-engaged universities.

Over the past year, UW Tacoma faculty and students partnered with community organizations on a wide range of initiatives addressing pressing social, environmental and health challenges. These collaborations included restoring riparian forests to support salmon habitat, co-creating alternative and low-barrier pathways for youth to access evidence-based behavioral healthcare, co-designing food justice programming that connects labor, culture, and care, and developing mental health workshops for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) youth.

“Through our community-driven initiatives, our students give back while engaging in career-connected learning, and our faculty and staff work alongside our partners to solve some of society’s toughest challenges,” Lange said. “Together, with our hundreds of community partners, we’re making a lasting impact in the South Sound and beyond.”

Tag(s): Ed Taylor • Kristin Esterberg • Robert J. Jones • Sheila Edwards Lange • Undergraduate Academic Affairs • UW Bothell • UW Tacoma

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