Emily Dean/ Winonan

Winona State University is being nationally recognized.

The university has been chosen to receive the 2015 Community Engagement Classification from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Joan Francioni, faculty liaison for community engagement said the classification recognizes Winona State as a university that connects its students to the community.

The purpose of community engagement is to find ways to have students engage with the community, so they can learn while helping the community.

“As a university we are here for education,” Francioni said. “As educators we want you to learn your discipline really well, but also we want you to go out and learn from other people, which will help you to learn your discipline even better.”

Francioni said Winona State is one of the 361 schools in the nation to receive the Community Engagement Classification.

“This is important to us as a university because it’s a national recognition that we’ve worked at. We are following up on it and working to get better at this,” Francioni said. “We are committed to this as a strategy for improving our student’s education and improving our community.”

Amy O’Connell, a junior in elementary education, has experienced getting involved with the community as a part of her learning.

O’Connell said she worked at Kids First, an after school program for students for one of her education classes. At Kids First, college students can go for a couple hours a week to tutor children or interact with them during playtime to get to know them better.

O’Connell said she liked how excited the kids were to see them everyday and knowing that they made a difference in kids’ lives.

“I’m really interested in working with that demographic of students and their struggles. It’s a great opportunity, and it was fun,” O’Connell said.

O’Connell said part of the reason she chose Winona State was because she knew the education program was known to get students out of the classroom and into the community.

In the 2012-2013 school year students contributed more than 200,000 hours of community service, Francioni said, describing community service as something that could be as small as picking up trash around the community or working with different organizations that Winona State partners with, including the Women’s Resource Center, Winona Park and Rec and Winona Health.

“I think one of the things that’s unique about Winona state is that we have a very broad participation in this work. It’s not just in specific programs. It’s a culture of engagement,” Francioni said.