In March of 2016, President Lane Glenn signed onto Campus Compact’s 30th Anniversary Action Statement of Presidents and Chancellors reaffirming Northern Essex Community College’s dedication to civic engagement.  As part of this commitment, NECC pledged to create a campus Civic Action Plan documenting the action steps and expected impact. NECC agreed to make this plan public, along with the assessment of its progress.

In order to create this plan, information was gathered campus wide to document current civic engagement efforts and goals for the next three years.  NECC has never gathered this breadth of information about civic engagement before. Based on this information, a writing team constructed four outcomes specific to NECC:

1. Faculty are encouraged and supported to implement civic learning and service-learning into coursework across academic disciplines.
2. Students receive civic education and practice leadership/civic engagement skills necessary to be informed, active citizens.
3. NECC students, staff, faculty, and alumni facilitate and/or participate in co-curricular and curricular community service opportunities demonstrating an understanding of their value.
4. NECC contributes to the economic, social, environmental, educational, and political well-being of our communities.

The implementation plan exhibits the widespread interest and participation in civic engagement across campus.  Much of the plan includes maintaining current programming that works towards the above outcomes. In addition, there are some expanded areas for growth, including:

• Instituting faculty mentor and peer recruitment elements into service-learning programming.
• Creating a system to recognize faculty for civic engagement work.
• Exploring systematic ways to assure students graduate with experiences and knowledge needed to be active, informed citizens.
• Improving data collection for civic engagement efforts campus wide.
• Implementing comprehensive assessment of service-learning programming.
• Pursuing grants and resources to expand programming.
• Applying for applicable college wide honors and recognition for programming.

Current levels of both personnel and financial support will be necessary to begin the pursuit of these new areas and completion of them may require new grant or other support.  A communication plan is also included to document how NECC plans to share its successes.