Community-Engaged Leadership

We have a variety of opportunities designed to help agencies build stronger connections with App State students, faculty and staff.

Clubs and Organizations

Select events invite Community Partners to campus to engage with students, faculty and staff. Opportunities like Club Expo, a large involvement fair that kicks off each academic year, may help raise awarenss of your organization and recruit volunteers, interns, and individuals/organizations interested in supporting your mission. Our university hosts 400+ student clubs and organizations (opens in a new tab). One or more of these may align well with your mission and be a good fit to partner with for volunteer events. Depending upon your needs, staff may be able to connect you to colleagues and students.

Internships

Nonprofit organizations often rely on dedicated volunteers to support many administrative and operations tasks central to their mission. Sometimes, an organization can also benefit from the long-term, skilled commitment of interns interested in gaining real-world experience in their academic field and supporting a cause close to their heart. We are happy to help refer you to the university's Career Development Center (opens in a new tab). Staff in this office can help you post an internship offering or job announcement on our campus networking platform, Handshake.

Research

Sometimes nonprofits would like to conduct research in their field and need help connecting to experts. Many faculty specialize in particular academic areas that may overlap with the particular issues your organization works to address. If you're interested in connecting with faculty to learn more about their research areas and ways you may partner or glean from their experiences, contact the Director of Academic Civic Engagement, Dr. Brian MacHarg at machargbd@appstate.edu.

Service- and Applied-Learning Courses

Many courses across the university have a service-learning component, engaging students in required service hours which directly impact their grade. These courses often must be arranged in advance to be appropriately listed in academic registration materials. To learn about how to connect with these courses, contact the Director of Academic Civic Engagement, Dr. Brian MacHarg at machargbd@appstate.edu.

Academic Civic Engagement may also be able to connect you to other courses for special projects. Are you looking to update your marketing methods? Expand a program? Develop a new event? Select courses across various academic programs often have a large applied-learning focus. In these instances, faculty may be looking to partner with an area business, nonprofit or community group to help their students apply course material to address a real-world problem.