Community Connections

What Partnership Looks Like

At urbanCORE, partnership means working side by side with the Charlotte community to solve real challenges. Whether you’re a neighborhood leader, nonprofit, or local advocate, we connect you with faculty, students, and resources that align with your goals.

How We Partner

From neighborhood-based research to student-powered service and grant-funded innovation, our initiatives reflect the power of true collaboration. Each project is rooted in shared purpose—shaped by community insight and supported by the resources of a R1 accredited public research university.

We co-design solutions

Every partnership begins with listening. We work with you to understand local priorities, then co-create research-informed strategies rooted in community experience.

We offer resources

Through urbanCORE, you gain access to university research, student talent, data insights, and innovation funding to support your vision for change.

We help build impact that lasts

Our partnerships aim to create outcomes that endure—projects that are community-owned, sustainable, and aligned with long-term goals for Charlotte’s future.

Community Innovation Incubator

Co-Creating Solutions in Charlotte’s Opportunity Corridors

The Community Innovation Incubator connects UNC Charlotte faculty, students, and community partners to co-design sustainable, community-owned solutions.

The incubator’s goal is simple but powerful: create outcomes that endure. By focusing on projects that are community-owned, sustainable, and built for long-term impact, we ensure that the work continues to benefit Charlotte well beyond the life of the program.

Focused on Charlotte’s opportunity corridors—our next stop: Freedom Dr./Wilkinson Blvd—the incubator builds partnerships that are deeply rooted in local priorities and shaped by collaborative research.

How It Works

From neighborhood-based research to youth-centered service projects, the incubator is a multi-semester, community-centered program designed to address real-world challenges with lasting impact.

For Faculty

Bring your expertise where it’s needed most.
Faculty collaborators play a vital role—guiding research, mentoring student fellows, and co-designing projects with community leaders. This is an opportunity to integrate engaged scholarship into your teaching and research portfolio while producing outcomes that address community-identified priorities. Faculty partners gain:

  • Collaborate as peers with community members to identify needs and design solutions.
  • Contribute to community reports, presentations, and publications.
  • Build relationships across disciplines and with local leaders.
  • Mentor student fellows and guide applied research.

For Students

Turn learning into action.
As a Community Innovation Incubator Fellow, you’ll join a cohort of undergraduates working alongside local nonprofits, residents, and UNC Charlotte researchers to:

  • Map community assets in partnership with residents and organizations.
  • Develop case studies documenting challenges, successes, and lessons learned.
  • Create youth-focused recommendations in collaboration with local young leaders.
  • Design and launch a service project based on those recommendations.
  • Present your work at the annual Community Engagement Outlook event at the Dubois Center.