The Resilient Communities Project has been selected as the 2015 recipient of the MAGS/ETS Excellence and Innovation in Graduate Education Award. Jointly sponsored by the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS) and Educational Testing Service (ETS), this annual award is given to a MAGS member institution in recognition of outstanding contributions to domestic and international graduate education at both the graduate school and program level.
RCP was nominated for the award by Henning Schroeder, Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Minnesota. Schroeder commended the program as “a shining example of the great things our faculty, students, and staff can achieve when disciplinary boundaries disappear” and possibly “the gold standard for advancing community sustainability practices while incorporating community engagement into the fabric of any university.”
“The Resilient Communities Project is a model for promoting greater collaboration and engagement across disciplines,” added Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Karen Hanson, in a letter supporting the nomination. “[RCP’s] innovative approach not only provides sustainability solutions for our partner communities, but also enhances our curriculum with interdisciplinary methods that are helping our students to develop the knowledge, skills, and agility that they will need as tomorrow’s innovators, lifelong learners, and global citizens.”
RCP will receive the award at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools on April 16 in St. Louis. The award includes a certificate and a $2,500 prize that will be used to support the RCP program.
Past recipients of the MAGS/ETS Excellence and Innovation in Graduate Education Award include Miami University’s Dublin School Leadership Program (2014), Loyola University Chicago’s Mastering The Humanities: Growing, Diversifying, and Sustaining Humanities Education program (2013), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Transforming the Illinois Graduate Education Pathway program (2012).