Pitt, CMU rank high on list for positively impacting community
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The president of Westfield State College in Massachusetts yesterday announced his list of schools that positively impact their communities, and the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University were highly ranked.
The survey, dubbed "Saviors of Our Cities: A Survey of Best College and University Civic Partnerships," is Evan S. Dobelle's follow-up to his initial 2006 survey. This time, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California tied for No. 1 among the top 25 schools, while Pitt and the University of Dayton in Ohio shared second place.
Carnegie Mellon was 19th.
Dr. Dobelle, former New England Board of Higher Education president, gained national attention in the 1990s for town-and-gown initiatives as president of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
He announced his new picks in Philadelphia at a meeting of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities.
Dr. Dobelle ranked schools based on "demonstrated and documented long-standing cooperative efforts with community leaders to rehabilitate the cities around them, to influence community revitalization and cultural renewal, and to encourage economic expansion of the local economy, urban development and community service."
He relied on school responses to questionnaires, his own research and campus visits. "There is a mild degree of subjectivity here," he said by phone.
First Published October 13, 2009 12:00 am
