CERN Awardees
Student Transformations
Senior Highlights: What’s Next
Community Engagement by the Numbers
Stay Involved!

As the year draws to a close, we’d like to highlight the ways our students, faculty, and staff have invested in the common good and shared democratic futures of communities within and beyond our campus this past year. Below, we recognize the efforts of Community Engagement Recognition Night (CERN) awardees and celebrate the seniors who are about to embark on new chapters of their engaged journeys.

In addition to these highlights, we share data to give you a better understanding of our community work. Within these numbers are hundreds of people and community partnerships working to move their commitments to purposeful action.

We are doing more than you might think, with space to do more and deepen our impact. We emphasize these efforts as an expression of gratitude, and an invitation to join in and continue.

CERN Awardees

Student Transformations

Senior Highlights: What’s Next

Congratulations Class of 2024! Where are some of our CCE seniors going next?

Peace Corps in Columbia
Connecting with Indigenous communities in New Zealand, the Philippines, South Africa, and Peru through the Watson Fellowship
Serving as the U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Officer through the Rangel Graduate Fellowship
Teach for America in California
Working with Inside Out Youth Services through the Public Interest Fellowship Program
Mental health Case Manager in Colorado Spring
Graduate School

We know that their community engaged experiences at CC have made a huge impact on the change that they want to make in the world. We wish all of our graduating seniors luck in whatever comes next. May you continue to make change and be changed!

Community Engagement by the Numbers

CC at Campus Compact Conference

The CCE team along with colleagues from the Career Center and Education Department spent a few days in Denver at the 2024 Campus Compact Conference.

Dr. Jordan Travis Radke, CCE Director, presenting on Community Engaged Learning on the block.

Community Engaged Learning

Have you heard people refer to “community-engaged learning” courses, but aren’t sure what that means? Community-engaged learning (CEL) courses promote student learning and community impact.  Practically, CEL courses include collaborations with community partners for applied projects, assignments, or experiences that aim to help students learn course content and benefit communities beyond the college. Community-engaged learning aims to do more than “get students off campus” (a common myth). Its larger purpose is to prepare students for lives of engaged citizenship through experiential learning, and to bring the resources of academia to bear on real-world challenges through applied knowledge and public problem-solving. While service-learning is the most common form nationally, CC has creatively adapted CEL to project-based strategies that work on accelerated timeframes. See below for seven pathways of CEL that work on the block, and click here to read more.

Stay Involved

Students

Volunteer and Internship Opportunities

Staying in Colorado Springs and looking for opportunities to remain engaged with the community this summer? Keep an eye on our Opportunities to Volunteer webpage!

Faculty and Staff Educators

CCE Grants

The CCE invites you to apply for grants to support your community-engaged learning and research. Proposals will be accepted on a rolling basis through the CCE Summit website, with a maximum award of $500 until funds are exhausted. The CCE offers a community-engaged learning (CEL) curriculum support grant as well as a community-engaged research (CER) support grant.

The PEAK Project

Are you interested in transitioning a course you’re teaching this fall to community-engaged learning, but don’t feel you currently have the community connections to do so? If so, you’re invited to participate in the Publicly Engaged, Actionable Knowledge (PEAK) Project by filling out this brief interest form.