Community Engagement in a Field Still Taking Shape: Insights from Australia’s Early Carnegie Applications

The Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement has become one of the most influential frameworks for recognising and advancing community engagement in higher education. While previous scholarship has examined its role in supporting institutionalisation in the United States and explored its adoption and adaptation in international contexts, less attention has been given to what institutional applications reveal about community engagement during the early stages of classification activity. This article examines how universities represented arrangements and practices associated with institutionalisation in applications submitted during Australia’s pilot and inaugural Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement cycles. It focuses on four domains: coordinating infrastructure, academic and professional staff development, community-engaged learning and institutional reflections on the application process. Drawing on qualitative document analysis of 11 institutional applications, the study examines how participating universities represented and evidenced community engagement. The applications provide evidence of institutional self-representations rather than how deeply or durably the reported arrangements were embedded in institutional practice. The findings indicate clear institutional commitment among participating universities through dedicated infrastructure, staff development, community-connected curriculum and institutional reflection. However, considerable variation remained in organisational arrangements, staff support, definitions of community-engaged learning and approaches to assessing student outcomes. While community-connected learning was widely evident, there was less agreement about how community-engaged learning should be defined and distinguished from work-integrated learning. Taken together, the findings suggest that shared institutional commitment to community engagement may precede convergence in definitions, organisational arrangements and evidentiary practices. The applications also highlight the significance of the Carnegie process itself. Participants frequently described the application process as making engagement activity more visible, improving coordination and supporting organisational learning and sense-making. Rather than determining whether community engagement has become institutionally embedded across Australian higher education, this article provides baseline evidence of how early Carnegie participants represented institutional supports, structures and practices related to engagement during a formative period in the Australian initiative.