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Civic Action Plan

Building an engaged campus and leadership for the public good.

Drake University’s commitment to community is deep-seated. Community engagement, the public good, and service-learning, have all been articulated as integral parts of our strategic plans of the past and present. By signing the Campus Compact Civic Action Statement in February 2016, President Earl F. Martin affirmed Drake’s commitment to:

  1. Empower faculty, staff, students and partners to co-create mutually respectful partnerships in pursuit of a just, equitable, and sustainable future for communities beyond the campus.

  2. Prepare students for lives of engaged citizenship, with the motivation and capacity to deliberate, act, and lead in pursuit of the public good.

  3. Embrace our responsibility as a place-based institution, contributing to the health and strength of our communities – economically, socially, environmentally, educationally, and politically.

  4. Challenge the prevailing social and economic inequalities that threaten our democratic future through our research, teaching, partnerships, and institutional practices.

  5. Foster an environment that consistently affirms the public purpose of higher education.

Using the University Continuous Improvement Plan as a framework, the following four initiatives have been identified as the first steps the university will take to strengthen Drake’s commitment to community engagement.
  • Teaching & Learning Objective: Refine standards for community engaged learning courses and re-develop process for course designation (COMPLETED February 2018)
  • Reflection Objective: Develop an inventory of community partners and ideas for projects (In Progress)
  • Execution Objective: Centralize Drake’s community engagement web presence with the creation of www.drake.edu/community (COMPLETED March 2018)
  • Stewardship Objective: Formally adopt university wide community partner definitions-(COMPLETED October 2017)
To read more, see the full Civic Action Plan Report.
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