At the opening day of the annual meeting of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) was recognized with the 2021 C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship for their community outreach.
“We applaud the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for its comprehensive approach to community engagement,” said APLU President Peter McPherson. “Partnering with the communities they serve to address shared challenges is at the heart of the public university mission. UNCG’s work to improve health care access to marginalized communities is a powerful example of the role public universities play in this space.” 
UNCG was lauded for its multipronged approach to increasing access to culturally responsive scholarship and community engagement, said APLU officials, who pointed to a number of initiatives by the institution including the creation of the the Immigrant Health ACCESS Project (IHAP), part of the UNCG Center for New North Carolinians (CNNC).
APLU officials note that UNCG has helped create multi-directional pathways of health care access to marginalized communities. They noted that IHAP currently reaches over 700 uninsured immigrant and refugee adults in Greater Greensboro each year and noted that CNNC is transforming refugee and immigrant services as it also transforms understanding and scholarship about the issues facing these communities. CNNC students, faculty, and community research fellows have contributed 25 peer-reviewed publications and over 20 practitioner-oriented publications and reports.
In June, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro was named one of four regional winners of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award. Those regional winners, named in collaboration with the Engagement Scholarship Consortium, automatically become finalists for the national Magrath Award. The other regional winners of the 2021 W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award were University of California, Los Angeles, University of Minnesota, and Virginia Tech. Each of the three other W.K. Kellogg Award winners received $5,000 to support their community engagement efforts.
