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Emily Janke, PhD
Co-founder, Senior Research Advisor to Collaboratory
Built from the field, not adapted to it
Collaboratory was created by higher education scholar-administrators seeking a better way to understand, demonstrate, and strengthen community engagement across institutions.
Origins
From UNCG to a National Platform
In the early 2010s, leaders at UNC Greensboro ran into a challenge that was showing up across higher education.
There was a lot of meaningful community-engaged work happening across campus, but no easy way to see it all in one place. Institutions struggled to answer basic questions like who was engaged, with whom, where, and toward what outcomes.
At the same time, faculty and staff were often working in parallel rather than together, unaware of overlapping partnerships or shared priorities. And when reporting was needed—for leadership, accreditors, legislators, or community partners—it usually meant pulling information together manually, again and again.
Collaboratory was created in response to that need.
Developed through the Institute for Community & Economic Engagement at UNC Greensboro, it started as a practical solution to a reporting challenge. Over time, it became something more: a way for institutions to better understand their community engagement, strengthen partnerships, and support more connected decision-making across campus.
PEOPLE
The Founding Vision
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Emily Janke, PhD
Co-founder, Senior Research Advisor to Collaboratory
Dr. Emily Janke is the founding director of the Institute for Community & Economic Engagement and an associate professor of Peace & Conflict Studies at UNC Greensboro.
As a scholar-administrator she has advanced practice and scholarship in the areas of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary scholarship with diverse teams, the equitable treatment of community-engaged scholarship in promotion and tenure policy and practices, strategic efforts to track and monitor community engagement and public service within and across institutions, and the use of restorative justice practices in interpersonal, intergroup, and institutional culture.
She is a member of UNCG’s Institute for Data, Evaluation, and Analytics and of the Carnegie Foundation’s National Advisory Committee for the Community Engagement Elective Classification. She serves on several editorial boards for community engagement journals. Dr. Janke has received the Barbara A. Holland Scholar-Administrator Award given by the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities, the Civic Engagement Professional of the Year Award given by the North Carolina Campus Compact, the Dissertation and the Early Career Researcher Awards given by the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement, and the John Saltmarsh Award for Emerging Leaders in Civic Engagement given by American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ American Democracy Project.
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Barbara Holland, PhD
Co-founder, Higher Education Scholar & Consultant
Barbara Holland, PhD
Co-founder, Higher Education Scholar & Consultant
Barbara A. Holland serves as a Senior Scholar in the Institute for Community & Economic Engagement at UNCG. In this role, Barbara advises academic and institutional leadership on academic culture change and the changing nature of the academy, facilitates workshops on documenting and evaluating non-traditional forms of scholarship for promotion and tenure, and assists UNCG in building its identity and reputation as a community-engaged institution.
She was most recently the Director of Academic Initiatives in Social Inclusion for the University of Sydney in Australia. In this role she led the University in the development of community partnerships and teaching/research strategies to enhance social inclusion in the context of Australia’s oldest research university. Previously, she served three years as Pro Vice-Chancellor of Engagement at University of Western Sydney where she created and implemented the University’s first strategic plan for engaged learning and research activities. Central to the plan is the UWS Schools Engagement agenda which in 2009 involved nearly 11,000 school students in academic enrichment, tutoring, and mentoring activities. The engagement plan also focused on small business economic development, cultural understanding, and environmental sustainability.
Before 2007, Barbara held national leadership roles for community engagement in the United States including the directorship of the federally-funded National Service-Learning Clearinghouse (2002-09), and an appointment to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development where she managed large grant programs for university-community partnerships (2000-2002). Earlier in her career, she held senior academic and administrative roles at Portland State University and Northern Kentucky University where she contributed to major changes in curriculum and organizational culture.
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Kristin Medlin
Co-founder, Director of Research & Development
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Kristin Medlin
Co-founder, Director of Research & Development
Kristin oversees Collaboratory’s research and development efforts that support, promote, and enhance the field of study related to higher education community engagement and socially effective impact. She works to raise awareness about the value of community engagement data and the imperative to develop a data culture, and helps to build systems and structures for data access, analysis, and use.
Prior to jumping into the corporate sector, Kristin served as the communications and partnerships manager in the Institute for Community & Economic Engagement at UNC Greensboro. Kristin’s scholarly work explores data governance, technology-assisted engagement, cross-sector partnerships, and tracking and assessment of community engagement. Kristin holds masters degrees from UNC Greensboro both in Public Affairs and in Educational Research, Assessment, and Evaluation.
MORE THAN REPORTING
A Theory of Change
Collaboratory was built on a simple belief: the way institutions collect and share data doesn’t just support reporting—it shapes how they see themselves.
From the start, the goal wasn’t only to track activity, but to help institutions make sense of it. That meant designing a system that could:
- clarify what counts as engagement
- surface the full range of public-facing work
- make it easier for people across campus and community to find and connect with each other
- support planning, reporting, and accreditation without starting from scratch each time
- give community-engaged scholarship more visibility and legitimacy inside the institution
That thinking still guides Collaboratory today.
Katie Evans, MPA
INSTITUTIONAL SUCCESS SPECIALIST
Katie assists institutions successfully implement and leverage Collaboratory on their campuses. Previously, Katie worked in Civic Engagement and Residence Life at Marietta College and Bowling Green State University, encouraging students to recognize and utilize their voices in community and activism work.
Katie holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Northern Iowa, where she served the campus as Student Body President. Katie is a certified by the Practical CSM Academy as a Customer Success Management Professional. She volunteers with the American Model United Nations Conference to facilitate their annual conference. Katie graduated with her Masters in Public Administration in December 2022 from Bowling Green State University. Her current research interest centers around university administrations’ commitment to/implementation of priorities relating to HECE and DEI work. She also serves on the board of the Yew Mountain Center.
Amanda Smith
FOUNDER, CEO & EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN
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Kristin Medlin
RESEARCH + DEVELOPMENT
Kristin oversees Collaboratory’s research and development efforts that support, promote, and enhance the field of study related to higher education community engagement. She works to raise awareness about the value of community engagement data, the imperative to develop a data culture, and helps to build systems and structures for data access, analysis, and use. Prior to jumping into the corporate sector, Kristin served as the communications and partnerships manager in the Institute for Community & Economic Engagement at UNC Greensboro. Kristin’s scholarly work explores technology-assisted engagement, cross-sector partnerships, and tracking and assessment of community engagement. Kristin holds masters degrees from UNC Greensboro both in Public Affairs and in Educational Research, Assessment, and Evaluation.
Kristin Medlin
RESEARCH + DEVELOPMENT
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Kristin Medlin
CO-FOUNDER
DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Kristin oversees Collaboratory’s research and development efforts that support, promote, and enhance the field of study related to higher education community engagement. She works to raise awareness about the value of community engagement data, the imperative to develop a data culture, and helps to build systems and structures for data access, analysis, and use.
Prior to jumping into the corporate sector, Kristin served as the communications and partnerships manager in the Institute for Community & Economic Engagement at UNC Greensboro. Kristin’s scholarly work explores technology-assisted engagement, cross-sector partnerships, and tracking and assessment of community engagement. Kristin holds masters degrees from UNC Greensboro both in Public Affairs and in Educational Research, Assessment, and Evaluation.
Lauren Wendling, PhD
DIRECTOR OF INSTITUTIONAL SUCCESS
Lauren works to ensure that all institutions successfully implement and utilize Collaboratory software to tell their story of community engagement. Prior to joining Collaboratory, Lauren worked as a Graduate Assistant within the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Office of Community Engagement where she built capacity for and implemented Collaboratory software to gather information from across campus and the community to inform assessment, institutional decision-making, and to tell the story of IUPUI’s collective impact.
Lauren earned her Ph.D. in Higher Education from Indiana University Bloomington, with a focus on urban education. Lauren’s scholarship focuses on the recognition and evaluation of engaged scholarship within promotion and tenure and the institutionalization of community engagement.
EVOLVING WITH THE FIELD
From One Campus to a National Network
What began as a single-campus initiative at UNC Greensboro evolved into a commercial platform supporting institutions nationwide.
After years of research, pilot testing, and collaboration with early institutional partners, Collaboratory became commercially available in 2017. Today, Collaboratory is positioned under Avviato, Inc., expanding the platform’s technical capacity and national reach.
Today, Collaboratory supports higher education institutions across the US in tracking, understanding, and communicating their public impact.
LOOKING AHEAD
Continuing the Work
Collaboratory continues to evolve alongside the changing landscape of higher education, civic engagement, and public impact.
As institutions look for better ways to show the value of their partnerships, student impact, scholarship, workforce development, and broader contributions to society, Collaboratory stays grounded in the same question that shaped its founding:
To what end?
Understand how Collaboratory is different
Learn why we designed Collaboratory around connection, context, and long-term impact—not just data collection.