Press Releases Campus Compact, a national coalition of colleges and universities committed to the public purposes of higher education, and Brown University’s Swearer Center for Public Service are pleased to announce a new partnership to present two national awards for engaged faculty: the Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement for Early Career Faculty and the Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award, which is awarded to senior faculty. The recipients of the 2019 Lynton and Ehrlich Awards will be selected in fall 2019 and recognized at Campus Compact’s Compact20 national conference, which will be held in Seattle, WA, from March 29 to April 1, 2020.
Campus Compact has presented the Ehrlich Award annually since 1995, with generous support in recent years from the KPMG Foundation. The Lynton Award was administered by the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE) at the University of Massachusetts Boston from 1996 until 2017 when it began being administered by Brown University’s Swearer Center for Public Service. Over the past decade the award has been presented during the Coalition for Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU)’s annual conference, an organization Ernest Lynton helped found and lead. Because both awards evolved in ways meant to honor civic and community engagement across faculty members’ teaching, research/creative activity, and service roles, in 2009, Campus Compact and NERCHE agreed to designate the Ehrlich Award and the Lynton Award for senior faculty and junior faculty, respectively.
Ten years later, leaders of CUMU, Campus Compact, and the Swearer Center agree that another shift in the collaborative arrangement makes sense. Given the intentional complementarity of the Ehrlich and Lynton Awards, and Campus Compact’s large and diverse institutional membership, Campus Compact and the Swearer Center will promote and present the two awards together. The Swearer Center will coordinate the recruitment and selection processes for both the Lynton and Ehrlich Awards, guided by a national advisory committee composed of previous award recipients and other outstanding leaders in the field. Recipients and finalists of both awards will be recognized at Campus Compact conferences: the national conference in even years and one of the regional conferences, on a rotating basis, in odd years. Beginning with the 2020 Lynton Award, Campus Compact will also add a $2,000 benefit to that honor, bringing it in line with the Ehrlich Award, and only faculty affiliated with Campus Compact member institutions will be eligible for the Lynton and Ehrlich Awards.
“We are pleased to recognize excellence in engaged teaching and scholarship in a career-long body of work through the alignment of these two awards,” says Andrew Seligsohn, Campus Compact’s president. “Through partnership with CUMU and Brown University, we will collectively amplify the value of community-based experiential learning opportunities for college students.”
“As a founding leader of CUMU, Lynton’s scholarship and legacy live on in CUMU’s mission and values,” said Bobbie Laur, Executive Director of CUMU. “CUMU is committed to supporting engaged scholarship at urban and metropolitan universities and are very much appreciative of our ongoing relationship with Campus Compact and the Swearer Center.”
“We are excited to be a part of this ongoing partnership to recognize the significant contributions and insights of outstanding engaged faculty alongside CUMU and now Campus Compact. Both organizations have and continue to play leading roles in the field of community engagement,” said Mathew Johnson, Executive Director of the Swearer Center. “This new partnership with Campus Compact will expand the visibility and reach of the Lynton Award in powerful ways.”
For eligibility criteria, past recipients, and other details about the Ehrlich and Lynton Awards, see www.compact.org/thomas-ehrlich-civically-engaged-faculty-award/ and www.brown.edu/swearer/lynton.
