March 23, 2026
CELE Center a leading partner in national recognition for community engagement
The UW recently earned again the Carnegie Foundation’s designation of being a community-engaged campus. UAA’s Community Engagement & Leadership Education (CELE) Center’s broad work enabling student involvement in community engagement across campus was pivotal in achieving the Carnegie re-classification.
Albert Einstein is credited with saying, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” When it comes to solving societal problems and strengthening civic institutions, people from a diversity of knowledge, backgrounds and experiences need to come together to level up our collective thinking. Public universities are the places in which people gather across differences with a shared goal of finding solutions that make peoples’ lives better. Authentic partnerships and community engagement are integral to this work. And the University of Washington is a recognized leader in it.
Highlights from tri-campus announcement
- All three UW campuses received the re-classification of being community-engaged campuses.
- Re-classification is affirmation of the UW’s continued work since the initial community-engagement classification was earned in 2020.
- Recognition is external acknowledgement of scale and quality of community-engaged work.
- Sustaining and growing outcomes requires dedicated infrastructure, student support and long-term investment.
The UW recently earned again the Carnegie Foundation’s designation of being a community-engaged campus. This is external recognition and endorsement of the UW’s effectiveness in and commitment to community engagement. The re-classification as a community-engaged campus is earned when an institution shows the pervasiveness and progress it has made in authentic community engagement since the previous classification. It is external validation of the UW’s capacity to sustain community-engaged work at scale.
As a longtime leader in community engagement work, Undergraduate Academic Affairs is proud to be an integral part of this recognition. The Community Engagement & Leadership Education (CELE) Center, housed within UAA, is a primary coordinator at the UW for community-engaged learning, partnership development and student civic leadership. The Center’s broad work enabling student involvement in community engagement across campus was pivotal in achieving the Carnegie re-classification.
The recognition “signals to the public the UW’s deep commitment to working alongside communities in equitable and impactful ways,” says Francesca Lo, executive director of the CELE Center and lead coordinator for the campus-wide study resulting in the re-classification.
“The self study required for the re classification strengthens accountability,” she explained, “and serves as a catalyst for broader awareness, new investments and institutional changes that further integrate community engagement across the University.”
“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. Community engagement isn’t peripheral to our mission — it’s central to how we move the UW forward in service of the greater good.”
— UW President Robert J. Jones, in campus announcement
Reciprocity at scale
How do you say CELE?
“CELE” is pronounced cell-ee. Like the cells we learned about in biology, the CELE Center is a core leader in a complex system. In this case, CELE is at the center of the UW’s community engagement infrastructure, enabling students, faculty and community partners to come together, expand and sustain relevant, high-quality community-engaged learning.
The CELE Center is a campus hub for community engagement. 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.
“Through community engagement, students see not only how systems work, but why and for whom,” said Ed Taylor, vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs. “That is why it matters: It moves learning from abstraction to lived experience, asking students — whether aspiring teachers, engineers, business leaders, artists and beyond — to locate themselves in the world and help shape it with clarity, care and accountability.”
In 2024–25, the CELE Center supported 3,500 UW students in its programming with more than 325 community organizations and school partners. Together, these students contributed more than 100,000 hours of service with and in communities.
This scale of engagement produces tangible outcomes: Students gain career-connected civic leadership experience; community partners expand their capacity without duplicating effort; and faculty integrate real-world challenges into teaching and research.
Service in action: Stories of student community engagement
Moving the needle together
The potential of partnership
Every day, students are learning and practicing building partnerships with communities — and growing their own leadership skills along the way. As community engagement continues to grow across all three campuses, the challenge is not whether this work matters, but how to sustain it with integrity, reciprocity and student access. Continued investment will enable the UW to develop the structures that allow community partnerships and student learning to thrive long-term.
Related and timely, the CELE Center is an important tenet of the UW’s new Civic Health Initiative, animating the efforts to make civic education and engagement available to every student.
To learn how philanthropic partners can support student civic leadership and long-term community partnerships or to explore opportunities to invest in scalable, community-driven solutions through the CELE Center, email uaaadv@uw.edu.