Results in Practice

What institutions do with it

A score is only useful if something happens next. Across more than 150 administrations, institutions have used NASCE data to win classifications, build civic action plans, set strategic goals, and decide where the next investment goes.

In their words

Three institutions, three uses

Each of these institutions put the data to a different purpose, which is the honest picture of how the NASCE gets used.

We have used the NASCE to develop our Civic Action Plan for Campus Compact.

Jonathan HilsherAlfred State College
The use

Evidence for a civic action plan

Campus Compact asks member institutions to commit publicly to civic work and to say how they will measure it. A NASCE administration supplies the baseline that a plan is written against, and the instrument to measure against it later.

The NASCE helps us talk broadly on campus about activating our students to increase depth.

Gretchen MielkeWidener University
The use

A shared vocabulary across the campus

Depth is difficult to argue about without a measure. The distinction between an event, a semester commitment, and sustained involvement gives faculty, student affairs, and community partners the same language for a conversation that otherwise runs on impressions.

NASCE has been helpful in developing strategic goals to make community engagement more pervasive on campus.

Savannah GriffenStetson University
The use

Goal setting against a baseline

The five tiers give an institution a destination it can name. Setting a target of the next tier up, then re-measuring on a cycle, converts a broad commitment into a goal with a number attached.

The recurring uses

Where the data goes

Six purposes account for most administrations. Institutions often begin with one and find the data answers two or three others.

Carnegie classification

The Elective Classification for Community Engagement asks institutions to document engagement rather than assert it. The evidence requirement is where most applications stall.

Civic action plans

Campus Compact commitments need a baseline to be written against and a measure to be judged by.

Strategic planning

A named tier and a target for the next administration turns a mission commitment into a goal with a date and a number.

Accreditation

An externally benchmarked measure of a mission claim, rather than a narrative account of one.

Resource allocation

Area-level scores show which of the eight areas of need are strong and which are thin, which changes where the next position or partnership goes.

Grant and foundation reporting

Funders increasingly ask for evidence of community impact. A national instrument answers that better than an internal count.

The pattern that works

Measure, act, measure again

The institutions that get the most from the NASCE treat a single administration as a baseline rather than a verdict. The instrument was built to be run on a cycle, and the comparison against your own earlier score is often more useful than the comparison against the national figure.

1
Baseline

A first administration establishes where the institution actually stands, usually with at least one surprise in the area detail.

2
Target

A goal is set against the tier scale, most often the next tier up, with the area scores naming where the movement has to come from.

3
Act

Programs, partnerships, and curricular integration are aimed at the specific gaps the data identified.

4
Re-measure

A second administration, typically two years later, shows movement against the baseline and against the national dataset.

NASCE SERVICE AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT FROM SPARC Put it to work

See your institution's real number.

Tell us what you need the data to do, and we will tell you plainly whether the NASCE is the right instrument for it.

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