Catherine Ashton and Susan Sanning Receive $10,000 Grant Supporting Community Engaged Learning

Catherine Ashton, Grinnell College Registrar, and Susan Sanning, associate dean and director of service and social innovation, have received a grant of $10,000 from the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) for their project, Leveraging the Expertise of Registrars: Building an Interdepartmental Network to Support Community Engaged Learning in the ACM. 

This project, funded through a grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations to the ACM on institutionalizing high-impact practices, will engage registrars at ACM institutions in discussions of how to develop institutional and systems-level approaches to supporting community-based teaching and learning practices that include policies, practices, and curricular reform.  

“Registrars are uniquely positioned to both protect the institution and move it forward in distinctive and meaningful ways. Because they are tasked with supporting academic programs and ensuring adherence to policies as established by the federal, state, administrative and institutional entities, registrars provide support as thought partners in policy design, record keeping, reporting, compliance, and evaluation,” says Sanning. 

This project aims to build a network of registrars, community engaged learning professionals, and academic administrators dedicated to crowdsourcing expertise related to community engaged learning and curricular, academic, and institutional policies and practices. 

“Not only will this project produce documents that can be used to shape campus level decision making and practices, but it will also serve as a catalyst for setting priorities for making national level recommendations that may help all ACM schools more easily support community engaged learning,” says Ashton.  

The knowledge generated during this project will benefit fourteen ACM campuses and Ashton, Sanning, and their colleagues plan to disseminate their findings through other regional networks and through national networks, including Campus Compact and the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. 

To learn more about the project visit the Associated Colleges of the Midwest website.