2014 Civic Engagement Professional of the Year
Sustainer
Dr. Emily Janke – UNC Greensboro

In her six years at UNC Greensboro, EMILY M. JANKE has been instrumental in efforts to recognize the scale and understand the impact of community and economic engagement. Now director of the Institute for Community and Economic Engagement (ICEE), Janke continues to promote the institution’s vision of defining “excellence” in community engagement as she works to develop structures that enhance collaboration and communication across university units, with community partners, and throughout the UNC system.

Dr. Janke leads design and development of the Collaboratory, a comprehensive, cross-departmental database containing community-engaged projects and partnerships at UNCG.

A catalogue, a showcase, and a tool for assessment, the online, searchable Collaboratory can be edited by UNCG or by community partners.

Janke supports various efforts related to community engagement, including UNCG’s 30-member advisory committee for community engagement, leading the 2015 Carnegie Community Engagement Elective Classification application process, and supporting the integration of community engagement in promotion and tenure guidelines. She also leads professional development on community engagement topics for UNCG faculty and students and teaches as an Assistant Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies. She co-chaired two UNC System task forces on Community Engagement and Economic Development, charged with developing and piloting system-wide metrics for community engagement and economic impact.

In addition to her work at UNCG and in North Carolina, Dr. Janke has contributed her energy and expertise to national organizations. She is a Visiting Fellow with the Next Generation Engagement Project at the New England Resource Center for Higher Education; she serves on the board of the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) and helped establish their Graduate Student Network; and she has published and reviewed numerous articles on public scholarship, faculty motivation for public scholarship, and campus-community partnerships in academic books and journals including the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement and Higher Education in Review.

Dr. Janke received the IARSLCE Dissertation Award in 2008 and IARSLCE’s Early Career Research Award in 2012. She received the John Saltmarsh Award for Emerging Leaders in Civic Engagement from the American Democracy Project. Janke is described by a leader in the field as “Wise and competent well beyond her years. Dr. Janke has not only built a robust record of scholarship and publications in a few years, but has also assumed and proven enormously effective in significant national, regional, and institutional roles in the realm of civic engagement.”

Janke is active in the local Greensboro community, working with many groups including the Global Opportunities Center and the Guilford Nonprofit Consortium. She received her Ph.D. in higher education from Pennsylvania State University.