Since its founding in 1991, The Center for Academic-Community Engagement (ACE) at SMU has cultivated in SMU undergraduates an understanding of the complex social issues that challenge Dallas, the region, and the nation. The Center specializes in a form of socially engaged scholarship known as “action teaching and research.”

To further its commitment to SMU faculty and students, the ACE Centers supports teaching, research (faculty and undergraduate), and activities that build social capital within and between Dallas communities. Since 1991, over 2,500 SMU students have taken ACE Center courses taught through either academic departments or the University's Office of General Education, where the Center is housed.

The Center's attention to the theoretical and practical questions of community includes issues of migration, diaspora, housing, gentrification, economic development, metropolitan-rural relations, globalization, cosmopolitan citizenship, and the topics around which these issues frequently revolve: healthcare, education, childhood development, gender, race, cultural diversity, and economic opportunity.