Are you interested in exploring new dimensions of community-engaged pedagogy—connecting your teaching with community issues, assets and needs in a way that enhances your students’ learning and benefits community partners? Whether you’re experienced or a newcomer to this pedagogy, join us to meet colleagues and contribute your perspective in this workshop series.
Fall 2021 workshops to be announced. Please check back for more dates and details.
Teaching STEM Through Community Engagement
May 27, 2021 | Watch Here
Community-engaged teaching is often thought to exist in the domain of the humanities and social sciences. However, public application of the sciences can both greatly increase college student understanding of material, and demonstrate the relevance of scientific study to those beyond the campus borders. In this session, you will learn about UCLA’s Brain Research Institute, and its successful neuroscience educational outreach programs, Project Brainstorm and Drug Outreach, Promoting Awareness (DOPA) Team. Participants will learn how the hands-on aspects of these programs lead to better learning outcomes for UCLA undergraduates, and how these engagement activities are generating interest in the sciences among underrepresented K-12 students.
Panelists: Rafael Romero, Ph.D., Assistant Director of Outreach, Brain Research Institute | Christopher J. Evans, Ph.D., Stefan Hatos Professor, Director Hatos Center for Neuropharmacology in the Semel Institute
Moderator: Bemmy Jennifer Maharramli, Ph.D., Associate Director for Strategic Initiatives, Center for Community Engagement
An Introduction to Collaboratory
May 11, 2021 | Watch Here
Community engagement and public service remain essential components of the UCLA mission. But given the size of our university, understanding the breadth and depth of our engagement can be a challenge. In an effort to grasp the full extent to which we are accomplishing our community-engagement goals, UCLA has begun using Collaboratory, a secure web-based platform, to assist all of our faculty and staff in telling the story of their community and public engagement work in dynamic fashion. In this session, we will introduce how Collaboratory will allow those on campus to increase the visibility of your community engagement and public service activities by easily collecting and sharing them in one place, while facilitating opportunities for those in the community to find UCLA faculty and staff experienced in specific disciplines and impact areas.
Panelists: Ellen Szarleta, Ph.D., J.D., Director of the Center for Urban and Regional Excellence and Professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University Northwest | Lauren Wendling, MS Ed, Customer Success Manager, Collaboratory
Moderator: Doug Barrera, Ph.D., Associate Director for Faculty & Community Engagement, Center for Community Engagement
How to Be an Anti-Racist Community-Engaged Educator
February 23, 2021 | Watch Here
The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police led to massive and prolonged protests, and calls for dismantling systemic racism. More than pointing at the police, these protests demanded that attention be given to dismantling systemic racism across all institutions, including higher education. This session will explore how community-engaged courses can be designed to be intentionally anti-racist. Panelists will discuss the complexities of incorporating racial consciousness in community engagement. They will offer academic and community perspectives on racial justice education, and national perspectives on how instructors, departments, and the university can assess their efforts to promote racial justice beyond the campus.
Panelists: Dr. Amy Ritterbusch, Assistant Professor, UCLA Department of Social Welfare | Yusef Omolawe, Library Director, Southern California Library | Dr. Stella Smith, Associate Director for the Minority Achievement, Creativity and High-Ability (MACH-III) Center at Prairie View A&M University, and the Anti-Racism Research Fellow with Collaboratory
Moderator: Doug Barrera, Center for Community Engagement
Best Practices for Community Engagement: Lessons from UCLA’s Congo Basin Institute–Building Resilience through community-engaged research, education and partnerships
November 17, 2020 | Watch Here
Successful community-engaged research and teaching requires building and sustaining relationships with local partners. Successful community partnerships take account of the issues that matter to local partners, value the expertise that community members and specialists, and ensures that local partners participate in determining the direction of the work and its dissemination. Join this session to hear from UCLA colleagues who have put these principles into practice in the context of their work on climate change, food security, and community development in Central Africa, and explore how these efforts in Africa might connect with and inform community-engaged work locally in Los Angeles.
Panelists: Thomas Smith, Prof, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability & Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, and Director, Center for Tropical Research and Co-Director of the Congo Basin | Virginia Zaunbrecher, Associate Director, Center for Tropical Research and Kevin Njabo, Africa Director, Center for Tropical Research and Congo Basin Institute.
Moderator: Shalom Staub, Center for Community Engagement
Community Engagement in the Time of COVID: Opportunities and Challenges with Remote Experiential Learning
November 2, 2020 | Watch Here
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused us to change, significantly, the ways in which we teach community-engaged courses, and how we and our students connect with community partners. This session will present some examples from instructors who have not only managed to pivot to new formats of community-engaged pedagogy, but have found successful methods of providing both their students and their community partners with tangible benefits, despite the need to remain socially distant.
Panelists: David Shorter, Professor, World Arts & Culture | Carla Suhr, Lecturer, Spanish & Portuguese
Moderator: Shalom Staub, Center for Community Engagement
Career Advancement as a Publicly Engaged Scholar
April 15, 2020 | View presentation
Many faculty members embrace engaged scholarship in their teaching and research as means to connect their work to broader social purposes, to work with local communities as a partner for change, and to inculcate a civic ethos in their students. However, faculty policies in higher education often do not recognize the value and validity of engaged scholarship and teaching in tenure and promotion processes. This session will help faculty members think about how to present engaged teaching and research in dossiers that effectively communicate high quality and high impact.
Panelists: Kal Alston, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life
Moderator: Shalom Staub, Center for Community Engagement
Thinking About Impact in Community-Engaged Teaching
April 6, 2020 | View presentation
A core element of community-engaged teaching is the reciprocal value for student Learning and for community partners. In this session, you’ll hear about the UCLA Labor Center’s Community Scholars Program, a long-standing initiative that engages students and community stakeholders in collaborative applied research that has advanced progressive change in Los Angeles. Participants will learn about various ways in which they can consider impact on both students and the community.
Panelists: Kent Wong, UCLA Labor Center | Janna Shadduck-Hernandez, UCLA Labor Center
Moderator: Shalom Staub, Center for Community Engagement
Community Partner Perspectives
November 21, 2019
Successful community-engaged courses are built on the foundation of strong community partnerships. Faculty learn about the partner organization’s work, its resources and its needs, and then work with community partners to identify appropriate student work which both meets an organizational need and creates authentic opportunities for engaging course content. This session’s panel looks at this dynamic from the community partner’s perspective, and offers faculty the benefit of multiple perspectives from experienced community partners.
Panelists: Blanca Diaz, Mar Vista Family Center | Mario Fedelin, Changeist | Derek Steele, Social Justice Learning Institute
Moderator: Shalom Staub, Center for Community Engagement
Multiple Models for Community-Engaged Teaching
October 23, 2019
Community-engaged pedagogy is an approach that seeks to create reciprocal value for the learner and the community. Faculty in many disciplines have embraced this pedagogy in creative ways in a wide range of courses. In this session, you’ll hear from colleagues to illustrate various models for this community-engaged teaching and learning: client/consulting, co-learning, research, and direct service approaches. You’ll also learn about the new draft framework for community-engaged teaching under review by the Undergraduate Council.
Panelists: Andy Atkeson, Economics Jenny Jay, Civic and Environmental Engineering | Lauri Mattenson, Writing Program | Carla Suhr, Spanish and Portuguese
Moderator: Shalom Staub, Center for Community Engagement