At UNC Pembroke, we understand that the role of the university is not only to prepare students for careers through meaningful educational experiences, but also to connect them with real-world problems and then to engage them in creative and collaborative solutions that promote lifelong commitments to active citizenship. In addition, we understand the university’s importance to the livelihood of our community, and we recognize and embrace our responsibility to create a better quality of life for all. This commitment is seen in our mission, “Changing Lives through Education,” and our Core Values: Service, Collaboration, Communication, Accountability, Integrity, and Innovation. UNC Pembroke believes that we exist to change the lives of our students, faculty, staff, and communities.  

As a result, UNC Pembroke has established the following commitments and outcomes as part of our Civic Action Plan:

Commitment 1: Empower students, faculty, staff, and community to co-create mutually respectful partnerships for a just, equitable, and sustainable future beyond the campus.

• Increase civic engagement resources (including community based partnerships, online tutorials, online resource guides for areas with high student populations, and WebEx seminars) for distance education students.
• Strengthen current and build new community based partnerships and provide opportunities for community to connect with campus.
• Serve more than 1,000 American Indian students annually through Project ACCESS.

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

• Engage 50% of first-year students in service before end of academic year
• Develop curriculum for Servant Leadership course for student leaders in service.

Commitment 3: Embrace our responsibilities as place-based institutions, contributing to the health and strength of our communities–economically, socially, environmentally, educationally, and politically.

• Build stronger partnerships with eight regional chambers of commerce to support economic development
• Increase the number of Healthy Start participants to 425
• Maintain a minimum 20 participants per case worker to ensure quality of service
• Develop two new summer youth camps and increase the number of registrations to 350
• Develop two new professional development certificate programs: Essentials of Entrepreneurship and Tribal Management

Commitment 4: Harness the capacity of our institutions–through research, teaching, partnerships, and institutional practice–to challenge the prevailing social and economic inequalities that threaten our democratic future.

• When appropriate, encourage university officials to utilize community based businesses when purchasing.

Commitment 5: Foster an environment that consistently affirms the centrality of the public purposes of higher education by setting high expectations for members of the campus community to contribute to their achievement.

• Work with faculty and academic affairs administrators to develop policies that promote and reward service-learning, including promotion and tenure and university sanctioned events.
• Increase professional development in service-learning and civic engagement opportunities for faculty.
• Build capacity within current service-learning advisory committee to host and lead development workshops.