We are big fans of Dr. Peter Levine’s blog on civic renewal. His recent blog post, “Missing the Civic Empowerment Messages of a Pope and a President” is a timely way for us to make meaning of the Pope’s coming visit.

“Both the president and the Pope talk explicitly about how we, active citizens, can and must address problems. These two men may have been caricatured as caped superheroes, but they are as clear as one can be that they are not the solutions to our problems; we are.”

Be sure to attend GW Teaching Day. It is a great day for anyone interested in excellent teaching, engaged faculty included. It is free of charge and open to all faculty, however space can be limited so pre-registration is recommended.

• Come find us at the Nashman Center’s table at the Teaching Support Fair
• Attend the “faculty-led session” about indirect/project-based service-learning by Margaret Gonglewski, Anna Helm and Wendy Wagner.

The keynote address will be about engaging students in group-work more effectively. Many of our service or community-based research projects involve student teams, so the topic this year is particularly relevant for our faculty community. The keynoter, Dr. Elizabeth F. Barkley, will also have a special workshop on “Making Group Work Work” at 2pm.

Link to pre-register

Link for more information, including the schedule

GW researchers Dr. Emily Morrison and Dr. Wendy Wagner are conducting a study of faculty and invite your participation. They will be exploring the variety of perspectives and experiences that engaged faculty have with community service and scholarship.

Participation in the study will take 20-30 minutes of your time and will be conducted Oct 5-13, including a session immediately following GW’s Teaching Day on Oct 9th. Please contact Dr. Morrison at emily_m@gwu.edu for more information or to volunteer for the study.

The CCPH International Conference will be May 11-14, 2016 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The focus of these discussions on health equity will be social and racial justice. Faculty, community partners, students, funders and policy makers are all welcome to propose and attend.

Session and poster proposals are due Oct 15, 2015  (Find details here)

Link here for more information about the conference. 

The Center for America Progress has released a report calling for more opportunities for students to earn credit through service-learning. This bold proposal suggests students might earn as much as one quarter of their credits in this way (i.e. a full year of service while enrolled in college).

Under their proposal, service-learning programs should be academically rigorous and connected to students’ disciplinary learning. They claim that offering more credit-bearing service-learning opportunities would extend this uniquely transformative learning experience to larger numbers of low-income and non-traditionally aged students who are often not able to participate in extra-curricular service programs and complete their degrees on time.

"Given the importance of service learning, colleges cannot keep treating service as merely an extracurricular add-on."

Link here for more information and to download the full report.

Do Now U is a new pilot project that will engage undergraduates in online discussions about current scientific issues and how to educate the public on science-related issues to benefit the common good. The program is a partnership of The National Center for Science and Civic Engagement (NCSCE) and KQED (an NPR-affiliate in Northern California).

Resources have been created to help faculty incorporate this program into their courses.  Link here to learn more about Do Now U and how to participate.

The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery and Busboys and Poets are co-sponsoring an exhibition on implicit bias, “Seeing the Other: Seeing our Self.” Several GW engaged faculty will be attending speaking events related to the show – to join us contact Wendy Wagner: wagnerw@gwu.edu.

The Council for the Advancement of Standards (CAS) have released the 9th edition of their signature work. Some of GW’s Nashman Center staff were invited participants of the service-learning programs standards review.

Each of 44 functional areas, including service-learning programs, have nicely articulated general standards for practice and accompanying self-assessment guides. The CAS standards can be an incredibly useful place to start your program assessment efforts. Link here for more information.

We continue to be interested in the intersections between civic engagement and the teaching movement connected to engaging students in “big questions.” The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) has reported on an applied example of this through their project, “Student Learning for Civic Capacity: Stimulating Moral, Ethical, and Civic Engagement for Learning that Lasts.” Link here to explore this further.

NPR has recently featured a couple of service-learning related stories that our community of engaged faculty might be interested in.

Healthy Eaters, Strong Minds – about engaging students in community gardens to learn about healthy food.

The story of how Katrina shifted the faculty’s attention to service-learning at Tulane’s Architecture School.

Science for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER) and The National Center for Science and Civic Engagement (NCSCE) are great resources for STEM faculty interested in improving science education by focusing on real world problems.

Their annual meeting and symposium will be held September 27-29 at George Mason University.

More information, including the meeting agenda, is available here. You can register for the meeting here.

Welcome to the start of a new academic year! Here you will find links to important information, events, and resources for those who plan to make indirect or direct service to the community a part of their courses. We support faculty who are engaging students in real world learning through Academic Service-Learning, Community-Based Participatory Research, and those teaching Community Engagement oriented courses. Please contact Maurice Smith smithml@gwu.edu or Amy Cohen abcohen@gwu.edu with questions or concerns about improving or creating real world learning and service opportunities in the curriculum.

Please feel free to share this information with colleagues. To subscribe and receive e-newsletter briefs by email, send a request to gwsl@gwuedu.