Julie L. Plaut

Brown University

Biographical Abstracts

Julie L. Plaut has led community engagement initiatives at the institutional, state, and national levels for more than 39 years, fostering deeply collaborative and purposeful relationships, learning, and action among community members, students, faculty, and staff. She earned a Ph.D. in History from Indiana University, where she helped establish and lead the campus office for community partnerships and taught community-engaged courses in American studies. As associate and executive director of Minnesota Campus Compact and director of academic initiatives at Campus Compact, she contributed to many programs with lasting impact, including the Engaged Scholars Initiative and campus Civic Action Planning.

Plaut joined Brown University’s Swearer Center in 2018, where she has shaped the development and implementation of the university’s Community Engagement Agenda, built capacity and supportive policies and resources for engaged research and teaching, mentored hundreds of students, and stewarded the Community-Engaged Data and Evaluation Collaborative, which is recognized as an exemplar of public impact research in a forthcoming Pew Charitable Trusts report.

Co-editor of Asset-Based Community Engagement in Higher Education (2014), Plaut grounds her work in a commitment to equality, lovingkindness, relational organizing, ongoing learning, and appreciation for diverse sources of knowledge.

Areas of Expertise

• Asset-based community partnerships
• Faculty development on community-engaged research and teaching
• Departmental and institutional planning, policy, and culture change
• Collaborative initiative development