Our Sankofa Moment: Stewarding Legacy

The 20th anniversary of the Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement offers an important moment to honour a remarkable legacy and to ask what faithful stewardship of that legacy requires now. First awarded in the United States in 2006, the Community Engagement Elective Classification is a framework through which colleges and universities examine whether their commitments to partnership, reciprocity, knowledge democracy and the public good are reflected not only in individual programs, but also in institutional culture, structures, policies, practices and relationships. At a time of complex and interconnected crises, this themed volume of Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement marks this moment by looking backward and forward at the same time. This volume seeks to honour the elective classification’s foundations, while also inviting renewed reflections on how its commitments to reciprocity, equity and the public purposes of higher education must continue to evolve and respond to changing circumstances.