What is Community Engaged Learning?

Community Engaged Learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community partnerships with instruction and critical reflection to enrich the student learning experience, teach civic and social responsibility, and strengthen communities.

 

The Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) is committed to supporting students, faculty/staff, and community partners in the following ways:

 

Advocacy — Communicating support of an idea or cause and collecting evidence to support one’s position

Community Conversations — Exchanging and weighing different ideas, perspectives, and approaches in a civil way

Community and Economic Development — Acting locally to provide economic opportunities and improve social conditions in a sustainable way 

Community-Engaged Research — Conducting research in partnership with members of a community with the intention of benefiting the community

Democratic Engagement — Using the formal structures of the political system to attempt to change society

Philanthropy — Offering charitable aid or donations to social change focused, community-based organizations to combat social problems

Volunteering — Short- or long-term donation of time and talent to directly support the activities of a community-based organization

Service-Learning — A teaching method that combines academic coursework with the application of institutional resources (e.g., knowledge and expertise of students, faculty and staff, political position, buildings and land) to address challenges facing communities through collaboration with these communities

Social Innovation — Participating in the process of developing and deploying effective solutions to challenging and often systemic social and environmental issues in support of social progress