The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (American) offers the following, widely used definition of community engagement, Community Engagement describes the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.Since 2006, the Carnegie Foundation has been collecting data on community engagement in institutions of higher learning. Participation in the program is elective (unlike the Carnegie Basic Classification) and interested organisations complete a survey that assesses various aspects of their community engagement. The Foundation identifies three elements of community engagement: curricular engagement, outreach and, partnership. Institutions can be classified as exhibiting one or all of these elements of engagement.The work of the Carnegie Foundation assesses community engagement on an institution-wide basis (i.e. not only focussed on community engagement in research relationships)