NACU Partners with Kettering Foundation to Study Civic Professionalism

The New American Colleges and Universities (NACU) is partnering with the Kettering Foundation on the Foundation’s initiative Educating for Civic Professionalism.

According to the Citizen Professional Center at the University of Minnesota, civic professionalism is defined as seeing oneself first as a citizen with special expertise working alongside other citizens with their own special expertise in order to solve community problems that require everyone’s effort. As part of the collaboration, NACU will work specifically with chief academic officers and conduct research to better understand how NACU campuses are developing civic professionals through curriculum and other methods of engagement.

“Today more than ever we need professionals that can effectively and ethically advance the well-being of communities and societies,” said Sean Creighton, NACU president. “Through this collaboration, our campuses will strengthen the links between liberal arts and civic engagement as they work together to graduate civic professionals.”

NACU is uniquely positioned to do this work because of its 25 year history of facilitating research and collaboration among like-minded comprehensive institutions that embrace the vision of Ernest Boyer and his call for a new American college that is connected and committed to improving, in a very intentional way, the human condition.