\u00a0 <\/span><\/b>agrees. Chen, who grew up in Guangzhou, China, and went to high school in Shenzhen, says she was conflicted throughout high school by the tensions and divisions of poverty, social class, gender, education inequality, and migrant marginalization she saw between the rural villages and cities in China. As a result, she\u2019s been an activist and volunteer in the fields of education, sustainability, LGBTQ+, and feminism.<\/p>\nOne of the tenets of the program is building the relationship between what students are doing in the classroom, on campus, and in the community, Siracusa says, and it\u2019s a principle that Hussain also believes in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI applied for the Community Engaged Fellowship because I wanted to be a part of the community where I would be living for college. It\u2019s so easy to just be a Colorado College student without being a Colorado Springs citizen,\u201d he says. \u201cBeing home-schooled until my junior year of high school, I actively looked for opportunities to connect with others in ways I would not have been able to otherwise. I did that through volunteering; it started with an adoption agency called This is the Dog! and later extended to the National Park Service,\u201d he says. \u201cI felt I was benefiting my community, and I wanted to carry on that feeling to college.\u201d<\/p>\n
By helping Bridge Scholars and other first-generation students become more connected to the campus and surrounding community, CC\u2019s Community Engaged Fellowships help increase retention. Nearly three decades of the Bonner Scholar program, in place at 70 colleges and universities and with more than 15,000 alumni, show a retention rate of participants that is the same as the student body as a whole, while students from Pell-eligible backgrounds are typically retained at rates lower than the wider institution, says Siracusa. The program closes this gap.<\/p>\n
He believes there are three main reasons for the increased retention rate, with the key point being that the program provides the extra touch points needed to help students from nontraditional backgrounds succeed at the same rate as their peers from more traditional backgrounds.<\/p>\n
Siracusa notes that the fellows are part of a strong cohort community; so far this year at CC that sense of community has included bonding activities such as a downtown scavenger hunt or an \u201cidentity river\u201d exercise organized by the Collaborative for Community Engagement staff. A second is that the students apply for the program when they apply to CC; in a way they self-select by their passion for community service and are bound by that interest. And a third reason, says Siracusa, is that the students have a home in the Collaborative for Community Engagement; a sense of rootedness in a place that models the same values and sense of the purpose of higher education as they do.<\/p>\n
Eventually the program not only transforms the students who are directly involved, but also their colleagues, the campus, and the greater community, says Siracusa. In addition to community engagement, the students participate in workshops on leadership development and social justice topics. \u201cBy the time they graduate, they\u2019ve made a meaning<\/span>ful difference in the community,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n
The Community Engaged Fellows\u2019 Four-year Commitment:<\/b><\/p>\n\n- The first year is devoted to exploration, and allows the fellows to learn about the various organizations in the region, what to look for in a site, its organizational chart and staff, etc.<\/li>\n
- During the second year, fellows are asked to make a commitment and to volunteer five hours a week for a year.<\/li>\n
- During the third year, fellows continue volunteering while also becoming peer leaders in the program.<\/li>\n
- During the fourth year, they complete a capstone project that links their Community Engaged Fellow experience with their academic courses.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
CC\u2019s Community Engaged Scholars:<\/b><\/p>\n
10 scholars in first-year class
\nNicole Chavarria \u201922
\nYajie (or Angelina) Chen \u201922
\nDaniel Cort\u00e9s \u201922
\nDylan Hall \u201922
\nAnnika Koch \u201922
\nJulieta Lechini \u201922
\nJasmine Linder \u201922
\nMin Pan \u201922
\nMaddie Ross \u201922
\nLonnell Schuler \u201922
\n<\/b><\/p>\n
Five scholars in second-year class
\nHeba Shiban \u201921
\nReilly Williams \u201921
\nMartrice Ellis \u201921
\nAsa Hussain \u201921
\nSamuel Vang \u201921<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CC\u2019s Community Engaged Fellows, a new program in the Collaborative for Community Engagement, provides support for students who have high financial need so they can pursue their passions for service and civic engagement without being obligated to work part-time jobs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1267,"featured_media":13607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[87],"tags":[89,26],"class_list":["post-13840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-winter-2018","tag-building-on-the-block","tag-features"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2018\/11\/CC-BUL-Winter18-20-CEFGroup-e1544210771410.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13840"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13951,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13840\/revisions\/13951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>Asa Hussain \u201921<\/b> was among the five fellows in the 2017-18 pilot program. \u201cIt\u2019s an amazing program and support group,\u201d says Hussain, who was drawn to the program because of the connection between financial aid and community service. He worked at Rocky Mountain Field Institute last year, then took that experience and applied it during the summer as the Collaborative for Community Engagement\u2019s intern, working on programming and orientation for the first official class of Community Engaged Fellows, which started this fall.<\/p>\n