On May 14, 2020 Campus Compact formally conferred its 2019 Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award on Dr. Diya Abdo, the new director of the UNCG’s Center for New North Carolinians.
The award recognizes her exemplary engaged scholarship on Arab and Islamic feminisms, as well as her work on the Every Campus a Refuge program, which she founded in 2015.
Watch Abdo receiving the award at Campus Compact’s online Impacts Awards Celebration below.
Abdo’s Every Campus a Refuge program advocates using available space and resources on university and college campuses to assist them with the resettlement process. Founded in reaction to Pope Francis’ call for every European parish to house refugees, Abdo’s ECAR program has spread to institutions in North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida and continues to grow.
Abdo discussed her work with ECAR on the Compact Nation Podcast in January (embedded below).
You can also learn more about ECAR from Dr. Abdo’s recent TEDxWakeForestU talk.
Campus Compact is a national coalition of 1000+ colleges and universities with a focus on the public contributions of higher education. They aim to build democracy through civic education and community development. They work to empower students, faculty, staff, and community partners; prepare students for lives as engaged citizens; embrace the responsibilities of higher education institutions as place-based institutions; harness the capacity of higher education to address social and economic needs; and foster an environment that affirms the public purposes of higher education.
Established in 2001, The Center for New North Carolinians’ mission is to promote access and integration for immigrants and refugees in North Carolina by bridging newcomer populations with existing communities through direct service provision, research, and training. They do so through community-based outreach initiatives to help immigrants and refugees develop the ability to navigate complex systems in their homes; research and evaluation studies to educate the general public, track demographic trends, and enhance the quality of service provision; and experiential training and leadership development for all community members.
