As a pedagogical approach, Community Engaged Learning (CEL) aims at enabling students to “engage in activities that enhance academic learning, civic responsibility and the skills of citizenship, while also enhancing community capacity through service” (Furco and Holland; 2004).
In this regards, CCECS liaisons between community partners and faculty members to integrate theory and practice that are guided by three principles:
- Social Impact: Addressing challenges faced by marginalized communities
- Reciprocity: balanced transfer of knowledge between students and the targeted communities
- Field Work: students complete a designated percentage of academically relevant field work
Since 2015, CCECS has supported over twenty service-learning courses with collective enrollment of more than 500 students providing an orientation to community-engaged learning for students, liaising with community partners, and working with faculty to enhance the integration of theory and practice in their courses. AUB courses integrated in CCECSs' projects include:
Students showcase their service learning projects at the end of the semester in the Student Civic Engagement Conference and participate in round table discussion and debate with their peers. Each conference focuses on a specific theme that addresses current societal and civic challenges facing their respective communities. Students come together from diverse majors and backgrounds to tackle the posed challenges and provide suggestions through the academic lens they bring forth. Accordingly, the level of discussions and debates among students, which is moderated by professors, community partners and key stakeholders, is enriching and thought-provoking as students become directly engaged with activists and policy makers.
Conference Proceedings: