As vice chancellor of engagement and community affairs, Lina Dostilio sets and advances the University of Pittsburgh’s community engagement agenda and catalyzes community-facing efforts across the University, including place-based engagement efforts, engaged scholarship, strategic partnership development, and community affairs. She was responsible for implementing the University’s Community Engagement Centers (CEC) initiative, which includes CECs in the Homewood, Hill District and Hazelwood neighborhoods of Pittsburgh.
Dostilio is also an associate professor of practice within the Department of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy in the School of Education. Her research explores the community engagement professional in higher education and hyperlocal, place-based engagement.
Dostilio initiated and led the Campus Compact’s Project on the Community Engagement Professional, a national research project staffed by 19 research fellows across the country that produced “The Community Engagement Professional in Higher Education: A Competency Model for an Emerging Field” (Stylus Publishing, 2017) and “The Community Engagement Professional Guidebook” (Stylus Publishing, 2019). This work has established a professional identity for community engagement practitioners within higher education, provided the foundation for the credentialing of community engagement professionals, and has launched a body of research exploring the intersection of these professional roles and the evolution of community engagement in higher education.
Dostilio serves on the council of experts for the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Advancing Research Impact, the board for Program to Aid Citizen Enterprise and the advisory board for The Forbes Funds. She is an inducted member of the Academy of Community Engagement Scholarship, a highly selective honor recognizing outstanding scholarly contributions to the field of community engagement. Dostilio was a research fellow with the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities and board chair of the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement.
Dostilio holds doctoral and master's degrees from Duquesne University and earned a Bachelor of Arts in sociology at Penn State.