Byron P. White, associate provost, urban research and community engagement for UNC Charlotte’s urbanCORE, has been named a 2023-24 Campus Compact Fellow.
Compact fellows are expert practitioners and field leaders who help to advance the work of Campus Compact, a national coalition of colleges and universities that offers support to higher education senior leaders, faculty, staff and students as they build the knowledge, skills and capacity for effective community and civic engagement.
White, who joined UNC Charlotte in 2020 to lead the University’s community-oriented research and engagement efforts, will serve as Campus Compact’s Executive Leadership and Institutional Transformation Fellow, specifically to advance Campus Compact’s agenda to deepen civic and community engagement within higher education institutions across the United States. White’s fellowship aligns with the writing and publishing of a book tentatively titled “Engaging to Survive: A Community-Centric Roadmap to Higher Education’s Future” to be published in 2025. White will connect with members to support the book’s research and development efforts and engage senior leaders to develop a portfolio of leadership development programs. He will o lead, in collaboration with his colleagues at the Engagement Academy, a pre-conference institute during Compact24 in April 2024.
“With our commitment to ‘producing transformative solutions to societal issues’ as a stated institutional priority, UNC Charlotte is positioned well to share knowledge and experience around community engagement in support of Campus Compact’s purposeful mission,” said White. “I’m eager to collaborate with and learn from this year’s expert fellows as we help Compact advance the field.”
The second cohort of Campus Compact Fellows, which White joins, is composed of practitioners, scholars and field leaders who will advance Campus Compact’s work in key areas: community colleges, dialogue and deliberation, student-led engagement, rural-serving institutions, anti-racist community engagement, federal policy, intercultural development, field-level research and recognition, and executive leadership.
"Byron’s leadership and experience as a scholar and administrator will contribute greatly to the Compact’s goal of engaging colleges and universities throughout the country for cross-campus collective action,” said Bobbie Laur, president of Campus Compact. “He understands and lives out the value of community engagement as an institutional mission that requires a team approach. As a Campus Compact fellow, he will develop tools that campuses across the country need to make this vision a reality."
White, also a professor of practice in the Department of Communication Studies at Charlotte, is a research associate at the Kettering Foundation; he serves on the advisory board of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and the board of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at DePaul University. He holds a doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in social science from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University.