We’re pleased to help spread the word about Faculty for the Engaged Campus, a new national initiative of Community-Campus Partnerships for Health in partnership with the University of Minnesota and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The initiative aims to strengthen community-engaged career paths in the academy by developing innovative competency-based models of faculty development, facilitating peer review and dissemination of products of community-engaged scholarship, and supporting community-engaged faculty through the promotion and tenure process. The initiative, supported by a three grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) in the U.S. Department of Education, builds on the work of the FIPSE-funded Community-Engaged Scholarship for Health Collaborative of health professional schools that has been working to build capacity for community engaged scholarship (CES) on their campuses and among their peers nationally (Details at http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/healthcollab.html).

In January 2008, the initiative will issue a “call for applications” to select teams from twenty diverse colleges and universities to participate in a faculty development charrette from May 28-30, 2008 in Chapel Hill, NC. At least four of the teams attending will subsequently be awarded two-year grants to implement and evaluate their designs. The initiative is also developing an online clearinghouse for peer review and dissemination of products of CES that are in forms other than journal articles, and a searchable online database of CES mentors and peer reviewers. For more information, contact Deputy Director Piper McGinley at or visit the Faculty for the Engaged Campus homepage at http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/faculty-engaged.html.

The Faculty for the Engaged Campus leadership team welcomes questions, comments and suggestions of key articles, reports, people and programs that should be considered as we get this initiative underway. These may be emailed to Piper McGinley. Stay connected with the initiative and related work through the Community-Engaged Scholarship electronic discussion group at https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/comm-engagedscholarship. Initiative updates and reports will be posted on the CCPH website as they become available at www.ccph.info.