Social Impact Partnerships
Partnering leading organizations in social impact with Purdue’s world-renowned community engagement work.
The Office of Engagement is your connector to Purdue’s internationally recognized community engagement and engaged research, across a large variety of fields. If you’re looking for social impact, community benefit, philanthropy, or community-engaged research partners, you’re in the right place.
What Purdue calls engagement aligns with what some fields call social impact, corporate social responsibility, philanthropy, or community benefit work. We engage to advance Purdue’s land-grant mission, connecting the university with communities and individuals in bidirectional partnerships to make the world a more equitable, resilient and prosperous place for all, at home and across the globe.
We leverage university resources in teaching, research, and engagement to solve societal challenges – collaborating with external partners in community and economic development, education, government, health care, and the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.
Partnership Assets
Mobilize the unique reach, resource, and research assets of the most consequential public university in America.
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Leverage our:
- Networks: Purdue’s established networks of NGOs, community partners, and stakeholders across Indiana, the Midwest, the nation, and beyond
- Programs: Purdue’s community engagement initiatives and programs – tested, evaluated, and ready to be scaled
- People: Purdue’s engaged, expert, and collaborative faculty and staff
- Reputation: Purdue excellence in science, technology, engineering, health, agriculture, liberal arts, management, and more, ranking as a Top 10 Most Innovative university and the 4th most trusted public university in the nation
- Brand: Purdue’s influential brand, recognized as the only university named to Fast Company’s list of Brands That Matter
- Research: Purdue’s world-changing research, fueled by 139 research centers and more than 400 research labs
- Innovation: ranked 5th in the world for utility patents and 3rd nationally for startup creation, Purdue delivers world-changing research and out-of-this-world discovery
- Students: Purdue’s world-class, in-demand student talent, totaling over 100,000 systemwide, can join your efforts and engage with your organization through service-learning and engaged research
Disciplines
Leverage Purdue excellence in STEM, health, agriculture, liberal arts, management, and more.
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Purdue engagement leverages research and talent across 13 top-ranked colleges and hundreds of disciplines at the West Lafayette campus, and opportunities to engage throughout the entire statewide system.
Excellence at Scale
Partner with an international leader in university–community engagement.
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Purdue Engagement is among the most well-recognized and respected engagement programs in the nation, and perhaps the world. Purdue’s work relative to faculty advancement based on the scholarship of engagement is nearly unparalleled.
The university is one of a select group of to hold the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification and the Innovation and Economic Prosperity designation from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. Purdue also holds one of the highest numbers of Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Awards for outstanding community-university engagement work.
Collaboration Boosters
Purdue’s infrastructure for partnership can super-charge your community engagement.
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An Agile Foundation
While universities are systemically complex, Purdue Research Foundation helps advance Purdue discovery, learning and engagement at the speed of business.
Extension
Partners that want to make a difference across the state of Indiana can reach the heart of Hoosier communities through Purdue Extension’s network of 92 county engagement hubs.
Events
No surprise at a university with a top hospitality and tourism management program, Purdue’s exceptional external events team produces 700+ events each year across six continents and can design and execute events to move your world-changing work forward.
Expert Engagers
Purdue’s work relative to faculty advancement based on the scholarship of engagement is nearly unparalleled, and our capacity for engagement grows each year through the graduation of faculty, staff, and students from fellowships and certifications in research impact in society, the scholarship of engagement, service-learning, and societal impact.
A Statewide System
Purdue’s student, staff, faculty, and resource network spans campus locations throughout the state of Indiana and online, including Purdue University West Lafayette, Purdue Fort Wayne, Purdue University in Indianapolis, Purdue University Northwest, nine Purdue Polytechnic Institute locations, Purdue Global, and Purdue Online.
Contact Us
Let’s partner make the world a more equitable, resilient and prosperous place for all, at home and across the globe.
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Roberto Gallardo, Vice President for Engagement
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Virginia Vasquez Vought, Executive Director for CI Engagement
“The collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.
Engagement Defined