Elaine Ward

Merrimack College

Biographical Abstracts

Elaine Ward, Ed.D., is a professor of higher education at Merrimack College in the School of Education and Social Policy, where she has held several leadership positions including chair for the higher education department, Faculty Senate executive committee, and as special assistant to the president for civic and community engagement.

Ward co-founded the Publicly Engaged Action and Research Lab (PEARL) with graduate student scholars and co-founded the interdisciplinary Food Justice Research and Action Cluster with faculty colleagues. She developed and serves as coordinator for the Carnegie Electives Research Lab for the American Council on Education.

From 2000 to 2010, Ward worked at the University of Massachusetts – Boston as the director for the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Community Leadership and Empowerment (CIRCLE). She was a visiting fellow with the New England Resource Center for Higher Education from 2012–2016 and Brown University’s Swearer Center in 2017. She was a member of the National Advisory Committee for the Carnegie Elective Community Engagement Classification (2017–2024) and an Equity and Engagement Fellow for Campus Compact (2023). She currently serves as a Senior Visiting Scholar at the University of North Carolina – Greensboro and a Scholar in Residence with the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE). She served as a two-term board member for IARSLCE, 2016 conference chair, and co-facilitator for the Alliance for Community Engaged Colleges and Universities.

Ward is co-editor of the books Publicly Engaged Scholars: Next Generation Engagement and the Future of Higher Education (2016) and Anti-Racist Community Engagement Principles and Practices (2023) and co-recipient of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award (2023) and Dissertation of the Year Award (2010). Her current research focuses on the history and founding of the Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement; institutionalization and assessment of community engagement; leadership; co-creating research counterspaces that honors publicly engaged scholars of color; promotion and tenure, and graduate student preparation.

Ward serves on her town’s Council on Aging, the city of Lawrence’s Mayor’s Health Task Force Research Subcommittee and Health Active Living Working Group, and the Board of Directors for the United Way Massachusetts Bay as chair of the Community Impact Committee.

Areas of Expertise

• Faculty identity and work
• Institutionalization of community engagement
• Leadership