Faculty Special Topics Series (Workshops Hosted Virtually)

While the pandemic hindered opportunities to learn in person, the CCEL academic team moved to create virtual learning opportunities by using Zoom to host a Special Topics Series for faculty and staff practitioners (and aspiring practitioners) of community-engaged learning. Seven sessions were held in summer of 2020 including:

• The Virtual Experience: Expand the Possibilities for Community Engaged Learning
• Community Engaged Learning in the Classroom: Rubrics, Reflections, and Resources
• Creating or Refining your Community-Engaged Learning Syllabus
• Community Conversations: The Elements of Community Partnerships

The series was repeated throughout the 2020-2021 academic year, with eight sessions covering additional topics such as Democratic Engagement: Supporting Students as Engaged Citizens and Exploring the Social Change Wheel: Working Toward Anti-Racism, Equity, and an Expanded Definition of Community-Engaged Learning. In total, 15 sessions were offered and CCEL is proud to have had 172 unique attendees with 256 participants in total, as several faculty/staff attended multiple sessions over the course of the year.

Student Reflection Workshops (Hosted Virtually)

The Center for Community Engaged Learning hosted virtual critical reflection workshops for students involved with community-engaged learning. Workshops ranged from Core Concepts of Community-Engaged Learning, which includes an overview of wicked problems, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the elements of building ethical and sustainable community partnerships, and the importance of practicing critical reflection. New this year were workshops focusing on social innovation in partnership with the Burgess Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Within all sessions, students explored concepts such as identity development, culture, socialization, power, privilege, and asset-based thinking. Over the course of the 2020–2021 academic year, CCEL hosted 17 student workshops synchronously facilitated through Zoom for 556 student participants. In addition, 208 students accessed asynchronous recorded options.