Community Service Fair
September 8th, 3-4:30 pm in Kogan Plaza
This event will help students who are looking for their own community partner placements. Students can also be certified to serve at schools and other youth-serving organizations with finger printing and background checks done in one place.

Knapp Fellowship Application/Pitch
Oct 1st  
The 2016 Knapp Fellowship application and open pitch time frame will begin on Oct 1- Dec 12 for students interested in connecting social entrepreneurship opportunities with their research and scholarship. Students will be able to set up appointments to pitch their ideas and receive feedback. Students are required to have aFaculty Advisor to receive a Knapp Fellowship.

Academic Service-Learning Development Funds for Faculty Request for Proposals
Oct 1st
The RFP will be available on Oct 1 with a Deadline of Dec 11 at 5pm. Watch for more information here in the Faculty FOCI e-newsletter.

Service-Learning Symposium
December 9th, 10am-3pm, Marvin Center 3rd Floor
Faculty — please put this on your syllabus!  A call for those who wish to have their students participate in this culminating event for the fall will go out in Mid-October, but we encourage you to add this to your course plan now. Please let Maurice Smith at  gwsl@gwu.edu know of your plans to participate. Click here for more information about the Symposium.

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “A Year of Racial Tumult Brings Potent Lessons – and Risks – to the Classroom” has us all thinking reflectively about our teaching. Service-learning faculty in particular need to be skilled at facilitating challenging classroom discussions. The events of the past year should have us all engaging in as much critical reflection as we ask our students to do.  We look forward to sharing these reflections at upcoming Faculty Discussions.

A call for submissions has been released by the eJournal of Public Affairs for a special issue on Campus and Community Civic Health. Due date is August 31st. Contact Mark Potter (mpotte10@msudenver.edu) for more information or to discuss submission ideas.

Campus Compact is an organization that works to “advance the public purpose of colleges and universities by deepening their ability to improve community life and to educate students for civic and social responsibility.”  On their 30th anniversary, they are asking engaged faculty from across the country to share their stories, memories and photos of the last three decades of connecting higher education to the community.  Please submit your contributions to communications@compact.org with a description they can use on their online outlets.

President Obama appeared on John Stewart recently, where both discussed the expansion of national service.  Stewart suggested that college might shift to a three-year experience with one year of service.  Obama made the case for the need for pathways to service.

What role should/could higher education play in a move to make service a shared American experience? Link here to an article about these comments from The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Please see this potential outlet for your scholarship on the student learning outcomes of community engagement or community based research. Submission deadline is July 31st, 2015. Publication date is September 30, 2015.

www.jehdnet.com

In a new report, The Kresge Foundation is calling for the nonprofit sector to do more to leverage change through advocacy, policy-change and public awareness for civic action.  There are many implications here for the competencies needed from college graduates to address the needs in our communities: research skills, understanding of markets, ability to use technology to communicate and persuade, and understanding policy and how to influence political change.

The Journal of Public Scholarship in Higher Education is an academic peer-reviewed journal with a focus on community/civic engagement. They are now soliciting peer reviewers, higher education faculty and staff with a terminal degree and a background in community/civic engagement research and/or practice. This is a great opportunity to connect to the national community of engaged scholarship.

This report highlights important needs in our local community, particularly related to social and economic justice for young people of color. Disparities include access to higher education, employment and earnings.

Link to Report

This article from the Chronicle sparked a lot of conversation in the Center this week. How do we improve our ability to engage students in critical conversations about the events in our communities? How do help students make connections between the practical work they do in the community and our collective goals for social change? How do we help students move from feeling guilt or helplessness to taking action?

Partnerships: A Journal of Service-Learning and Civic Engagement is a peer-reviewed online journal from North Carolina Campus Compact.  A few highlights from the latest issue (Vol 6, Num 2, 2015):

• International partnerships enhanced with storytelling practices
• Interdisciplinary service-learning teams through the lens of social ecology theory
• The social construction of difference when service is defined as “volunteerism”

While the “funding opportunities” posts here will tend to focus on external funding sources, this is a good time of year to remember the support available to you right here at GW. A few examples:

Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service: Course Development Grants

Funds available to support the development of service-learning and community-based research courses. Grantees attend workshops and have individual consultations to assist with course design, establishing partnerships with community organizations and other relevant issues. Final proposals to receive 2016/2017 funds are due at the end of January 2016, with decisions made in early February.  Click here for more information.

University Teaching and Learning Center: Peer-Reviewed Explorations in Teaching (PRET)

The PRET program provides an opportunity for you to demonstrate rigorous, peer-reviewed contributions to excellent teaching.  Obviously, at the Center we are enthusiastic about innovations connected to active community engagement (grin) but these grants are open to any proposal that would demonstrate a new approach to teaching and learning in your course. Applications are due in early December. Click here for more information.

Office of Diversity and Inclusion: Innovation in Diversity and Inclusion Grant

These grants support activities that “use the lens of diversity and inclusion to advance GW’s academic, education, research, and service mission.”  The next opportunity to submit a proposal is October 15, 2015.  Click here for more information.

Center for Career Services:  Faculty and Staff Innovation Grants

Supported by the Shenkman Career Services Fund, these $2,000 grants support faculty who create professional and career development activities for undergraduate or graduate students. Connecting applied professional and career skills to service-learning activities is one such option. Proposals for Spring semester awards are due October 1, 2015. Click here for more information.

Campus Compact will be celebrating its 30th anniversary next academic year. The culminating event will be their national conference, March 21-23, 2016 in Boston. Conference session proposals are being welcomed until June 19th.

If you are interested joining with GW colleagues to present on a topic, please let us know. Contact us at gwsl@gwu.edu. Click here for more information. 

The Spencer Foundation provides funding to support a year of study for mid-career (7-20 years post doctorate) scholars who are interested in advancing their understanding of a compelling problem in education. Recipients are released from teaching and service responsibilities in order to explore new areas of study that can connect to their existing scholarship. For example, grantees might invest a year learning new methodological tools or studying the theories of another discipline that might intersect and inform their work in new ways. Proposals are due September 10, 2015.  The funded year is 2016/2017.    Click here for more information.

This time of year, the service-learning listserves and blogs are active with new book and article recommendations. We would like to strike up this conversation at a campus-level, and invite you to share your favorite assigned readings.

As a field that crosses all disciplines, we are always discovering new literature and frameworks that help students more fully understand important issues related to (for example):

• ethical community engagement;
• social inequality;
• the role of citizens in a democracy;
• approaches community engagement (direct service, advocacy, issue research, politics and voting, etc.) and how each leverages social change differently;
• applications of discipline-specific knowledge and skills to one’s civic as well as professional roles;
• how general education goals such as critical thinking, problem solving and communication emerge uniquely as one works in diverse groups toward shared goals

Please use the “comments” space below to share your favorite assigned readings (author, title). The Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service will gather and share these resources to the GW service-learning community on Blackboard.