The Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities is pleased to announce that Brenda Marsteller Kowalewski, Ph.D., Weber State University, was awarded the 2024 Barbara A. Holland Scholar-Administrator Award. The Holland Scholar selection committee, composed of emeriti CUMU presidents and chancellors, identified Kowalewski as a distinguished scholar-administrator—like Dr. Holland—whose leadership and intellectual voice illuminates the transformative power of urban and metropolitan higher education in the lives of individuals and communities.
“On behalf of our board of directors, I want to congratulate Dr. Marsteller Kowalewski,” said Valerie Holton, Ph.D., chief executive officer of CUMU. “Her approach to integrating scholarship, teaching and service into her work as a scholar-administrator is commendable and has helped to elevate Weber State’s community engagement and anchor mission work locally, regionally and nationally.”
Brenda Marsteller Kowalewski, Ph.D., Weber State University
Kowalewski serves as vice provost of high impact educational experiences, faculty excellence, international and graduate studies at WSU, where she recently championed efforts to reimagine faculty development in inclusive pedagogy through the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
“I can’t think of anyone more deserving than Brenda to receive this award,” said Brad Mortensen, WSU president. “Continuing since her earliest days at Weber State, she has prioritized uplifting the local community, seeking ways for the university to engage with our neighbors, identifying their needs and working together to solve problems. As a professor, she instilled these values in her students, and now, as an administrator, she shares that passion far beyond the classroom.”
As associate provost, Kowalewski co-created the Office of Community Development to support WSU’s anchor mission. And in 2016, she convened a coalition of seven anchor institutions in Ogden, including the two local hospitals, school district, technical college, city government and health department, to leverage their combined assets to assist in revitalizing East Central Ogden. That coalition grew into the Ogden Civic Action Network, or OgdenCAN, an innovative space that facilitates collaboration and local partnerships in health, education, built environment, economic stability and social fabric to improve the welfare of the communities in that area of Ogden.
“Urban and metropolitan universities must be places where partnerships in the community are cultivated, celebrated and seen as critical for fulfilling our co-responsibility as good stewards of place,” Kowalewski said. “We must nurture civic-mindedness for our students. We must change university business practices to create a positive economic impact in local communities. We must convene local anchor institutions and leverage their collective resources to create a sustainable economic, social, cultural and environmental system that ensures opportunity for everyone.”
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Kowalewski has garnered extensive national attention for Weber State’s commitment to connect course work with university-community engaged work since opening the Center for Community Engaged Learning in 2006. Under her leadership as founding director, the cross-divisional center for community engagement became a national model for academic and student affairs collaborative facilitation of community engaged learning. Developed as a one-stop shop model, the center makes the university nimble in responding to the rapidly changing interests and needs of students, faculty, staff and community partners.
“The opportunity to engage in this work with a group of passionate colleagues from both campus and community has been one of the greatest honors of my life,” Kowalewski said. “And now, to have that collective work recognized with an award that bears the name of one of the greatest collaborators and pioneers in the community engagement field is one of the most humbling experiences of my career.”
As chair of a 30-member task force, Kowalewski oversees WSU’s application process for the Carnegie Foundation’s Community Engagement Classification, initially awarded in 2008 and renewed in 2015. In 2015, she was awarded the New York Life Higher Education Civic Engagement Award, and in 2013, she was recognized as a finalist for the Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award. She has written and presented on community engagement and the gender wage gap in leading journals. Kowalewski holds a bachelor’s in sociology from Hofstra University, as well as a master’s and doctorate from the University of Maryland, College Park.