UC Merced’s chancellor and leadership team have chosen to adopt and leverage the Carnegie Foundation’s definition of community engagement as “collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.”

UC Merced’s commitment to community engagement runs deep, as evidenced by longstanding partnerships with community organizations that have evolved over time, its central role in our strategic plan, identification of community engagement as one of the five hallmarks of undergraduate education, and our offering of an academic minor in community engagement. 

Community engagement is pervasive, as evidenced by multiple centers such as the Resource Center for Community Engaged Scholarship (ReCCES); the Community Engagement Center, focused primarily on students’ co-curricular activities and facilitating teaching of community-based learning courses; research centers such as the Center for Analytic Political Engagement, the Center for the Humanities, the Community and Labor Center, and the Health Sciences Research Institute’s Community Research Center located strategically in downtown Merced and a mobile lab coming soon.

Curriculum-related advances related to community engagement include the campuswide Community Research and Service minor offered by the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts since 2015, the School of Engineering’s longstanding, signature Innovate to Grow capstone program, our campuswide honor’s curriculum, and the Community Service Graduation Pin, recognizing completion of experiential community-focused research or service opportunities.

Students in our interdisciplinary humanities M.A. and Ph.D. programs have participated in coursework and research to learn how to effectively and responsibly conduct community engaged scholarship, supported by a series of grants from the Henry Luce Foundation. A grant from the Mellon Foundation in 2024 to develop a Public Humanities Design Studio is further deepening a sustainable network of faculty collaborations with community organizations and graduate training in community-engaged humanities scholarship. 

UC Merced Extension partners with regional community initiatives and organizations to boost economic and social development with a focus on delivering courses in convenient and flexible formats, including fully online, hybrid, in-person and custom modalities. The program moved to its new home in downtown Merced in 2024 marking a major commitment on the part of the university to be more available to the community. 

Community News