{"id":3367,"date":"2017-03-22T17:36:22","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T17:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/?p=3367"},"modified":"2017-03-22T17:36:22","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T17:36:22","slug":"deepening-partnerships-with-community-engaged-scholars-and-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/2017\/03\/22\/deepening-partnerships-with-community-engaged-scholars-and-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Deepening Partnerships with Community Engaged Scholars and Leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alana Aamodt \u201918<\/strong><\/p>\n

New this academic year, the Community Engaged Scholars Program offers students a comprehensive, structured plan for sustained, informed, and deliberate community engagement. Beyond just requiring a certain number of hours of community engagement, the program helps students find personal meaning and interconnectedness in their activities. Community engagement includes any pursuit that works with a community or campus partner to address a social or environmental need, or indirectly contributes to the mission of those partners through raising awareness around social or environmental issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am thrilled at the number of students \u2014 more than 120 \u2014 who joined the Community Engaged Scholars Program in its inaugural year,\u201d says Jordan Travis Radke, director of the Collaborative for Community Engagement. \u201cTo me, it demonstrates the passion and drive our students have for living lives dedicated to positive social change. I am excited to see what the future holds, given that this program seems to deeply resonate with our students.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program\u2019s goal is to encourage students to consider and articulate how what they\u2019re doing constitutes engaged citizenship and addresses social and environmental needs, rather than just setting generic bounds to what community engagement means. To do this, the program requires on average 10 hours of community engagement each block, as well as participation in skills trainings, and co-curricular learning events, such as lectures on related topics. The program culminates in a senior reflection retreat and the creation of an engagement portfolio that serves as a record of their work, and as a reflective articulation of their progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have enjoyed community service work since I was in high school,\u201d says Emma Kepes, \u201917, a community engaged scholar, \u201cso being a part of clubs to continue that work in college was the natural choice. Through these clubs, I have also found that I enjoy working with kids the most, so I have stuck with AMA and Cool Science since freshman year for that reason.\u201d AMA, Aprender Mediante Amistad, which is Spanish for \u201clearning through friends,\u201d provides mentorship and tutoring for local students between the ages of 5 and 18 whose first language is Spanish, and Cool Science brings local kids to campus for fun and easy science experiments. Kepes is the co-leader of AMA. \u201cI hope to do more important work like this after I graduate,\u201d Kepes adds.<\/p>\n

CCE also offers a Community Engaged Leadership Certificate, whose mission is to \u201cdevelop civic leaders by cultivating students\u2019 ability to integrate and apply learning toward solving complex social challenges.\u201d The resulting structure, initially implemented in 2010, is a three-phase program starting a student\u2019s sophomore year with exploring unmet community-driven needs and committing time to address those needs; then focusing skills and commitment towards one social issue during junior year; and implementing what they\u2019ve learned through a capstone project of the student\u2019s own design senior year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main [difference] is that the leadership program has a capstone project,\u201d shares Montana Bass \u201918. \u201cThe project involves a partnership with a local community and can be related to your thesis, so it\u2019s an awesome way to tie your studies into community work that might not be there otherwise.\u201d The CEL program is also a smaller, more selective cohort than CES. While both programs require 75 hours of service per year, the CEL program asks for those hours to be at a higher responsibility during the student\u2019s junior year, such as taking the lead on a project, group, or organization, and then devoting hours in the student\u2019s senior year to an integrative capstone project.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy favorite part so far has been getting to know the other people in the leadership certificate program. It\u2019s a really small group so conversations are really intimate and everyone can get involved,\u201d Bass adds, referring to the cohort model of the program.<\/p>\n

These programs both work to strengthen CC\u2019s commitment to community engagement and engaged learning. Read more and apply for the CES program<\/a>, and learn more about the requirements and timeline for the Community Engaged Leadership Certificate<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alana Aamodt \u201918 New this academic year, the Community Engaged Scholars Program offers students a comprehensive, structured plan for sustained, informed, and deliberate community engagement. Beyond just requiring a certain number of hours of community engagement, the program helps students find personal meaning and interconnectedness in their activities. Community engagement includes any pursuit that … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Deepening Partnerships with Community Engaged Scholars and Leaders”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":648,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-around-campus","category-general-news","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/648"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3368,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3367\/revisions\/3368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}