A UCLA Strategic Plan Grant Program
To achieve the UCLA Strategic Plan’s goal to deepen UCLA’s engagement with Los Angeles, the UCLA Center for Community Engagement is pleased to announce the availability of Community-Engaged Course Development Grants. This program will offer up to ten $5,000 awards to support UCLA instructors to develop new community-engaged courses at the undergraduate, graduate, and/or professional level. Priority will be given to proposals for new courses that can be integrated into and sustained within the curriculum of a department’s undergraduate, graduate, or professional school program.
Community-engaged courses follow the Academic Senate’s criteria for this type of credit-bearing course which are designated with the “XP” course number suffix. The community-engaged course criteria include:
- The community-engaged work creates reciprocal value for the students as learners and for community partners
- The community-engaged work is sustained across the quarter
- The community-engaged work is integrated into the course design, including assessment of student learning
- Students have the opportunity to actively connect the community-based experience with their academic learning through critical reflection.
Community-engaged teaching can take many different forms depending on the learning goals for a particular course, the course level and departmental context, and the aims of the community partnership. Please see more information about the framework here.
Eligibility: All UCLA Instructors of record
The Program: Each grantee will receive an award of $5,000, payable to a research fund (for Senate Ladder Faculty) or professional development fund (for other categories of instructors). Course development grantees will participate in the following activities:
- A one-day workshop on best practices in community-engaged teaching (to be scheduled in September 2025); and
- A once-per-quarter meeting over Academic Year 2025-26 of a community-engaged course development learning community focusing on community-engaged course design, culminating in a presentation of a new syllabus by Spring Quarter 2026.
- Participation in the September 2026 “best practices” workshop to pass on the learning about community-engaged course development to the next cohort
Each grantee will be expected to work with their department chair to schedule this new course during the 2026-27 or 2027-28 academic years.
TO APPLY
Submit the following items to communityengagement@college.ucla.edu by Tuesday, April 1, 2025.
- Proposed Course Title
- Include the department, and whether the proposed course is for undergraduates, graduate students or professional school students
- Proposal Narrative (2-3 pages)
- Describe your community-engaged teaching and/or research agenda.
- Identify the community partners with whom you currently work, and/or describe the types of community partners with whom you would want to work for your proposed course.
- Discuss your ideas for creating a community-engaged course that advances your teaching and/or research interests. Describe any communication you have had with prospective community partners about this idea for a community-engaged course. (How might the students’ efforts build the capacity of the partner organization/agency and/or contribute to efforts to advance equity and social justice within the communities served by the partner?)
- Discuss how your proposed course meets a need related to the curriculum of your department.
- Please note when you propose to launch this course, either during AY 2026-27 or 2027-28.
- Your CV (please underscore community-engaged scholarly activity and achievement)
- Evidence of departmental support
- Letters from your department chair and curriculum committee indicating how your proposed course deepens your department’s community/public engagement and how this pedagogy of engagement can be sustained within the department’s curriculum.
The Center for Community Engagement will announce the award recipients in Spring quarter, 2025. Funds will be transferred at the start of the new fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2025. All funds should be used by the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 2026.
CONTACT
For questions about the Community-Engaged Course Development Grants or other support opportunities for your community-engaged teaching and research, please contact either:
- Shalom Staub, PhD., Assistant Vice Provost and Executive Director
- Doug Barrera, PhD., Associate Director for Faculty and Community Engagement
2024-25 Community-Engaged Course Development Grantees
Maya Ayoub – Disability Studies
Autism and Neurodiversity
The goal of the course is to study and understand the basis of the different models of disability, both the social and the medical models. Students will engage in dialogue, research, and reflection to understand the complexities of autism as a form of human diversity, while also considering implications of the various perspectives on policy, practice, and societal inclusion.
Elsa Duval and Cara Tovey – European Languages & Transcultural Studies
Teaching European Languages and Cultures in Los Angeles: Connecting with Diverse Communities
Students will work with students and teachers in Los Angeles’ French-, German- and Italian-speaking communities. They will collaborate with local language educators to address the needs of their language schools, build long-term partnerships, and enhance community well-being. UCLA students will use the cultural and linguistic knowledge they have acquired in their classes in real-world settings and explore how their own pedagogical experience not only enhances their education but also contributes to the community.
Emily Hotez and Mona AuYoung – Fielding School of Public Health, Dept. of Health Policy & Management
Authentic Collaboration with Communities in Research, Practice, and Policy Initiatives
The goal is to develop and implement a workshop series-—and corresponding certificate program—as part of the National Clinical Scholars Program (NCSP) two-quarter Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPR) course. Each workshop will be co-led by community leaders who have engaged in partnerships with researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, and will feature an overview of the project and partnership, success and challenges, and lessons learned.
Asma Sayeed – Islamic Studies, Near Eastern Languages & Cultures
Muslims and Civic Engagement: Case Studies from Greater Los Angeles
This course will explore how Muslims navigate challenges around religious participation in a secular democracy, widespread misperceptions and stereotypes about Islam and Muslims (including Islamophobia), and racial, ethnic, and religious integration across profoundly heterogenous Muslim communities in the US. The course will focus on organizations in the following areas: Civil Rights, Public Policy, Health Services, Urban Reform, Racism, Educational Services, and Gender and Women’s Rights.
Asako Hayashi Takakura – Japanese Program, Dept. of Asian Languages & Cultures
Advanced Modern Japanese with Community Engagement
The course is designed to harness the linguistic capabilities of undergraduate and graduate students learning Japanese, fostering cultural exchange, and creating a positive impact within both local and international communities. The intention is to facilitate language exchange activities between 4th-6th graders in Japanese immersion programs in the Greater Los Angeles area and their peers in English immersion programs in Japan.
Elbert Tom – School of Dentistry
Volunteerism and Altruistic Participation in the Dental Profession
This course aims to instill a sense of volunteerism and altruistic participation in dental professionals. Students will actively contribute to addressing oral health disparities in the Los Angeles community while developing a deep understanding of the social determinants of health.
Kelly Vitzthum – School of Dentistry
Service-Learning and Community Dentistry
This goal of the course is to establish a didactic component of UCLA School of Dentistry’s community-based clinical education (CBCE) program to contextualize and enhance the service-learning aspect of our work with information about public health, access to care challenges, and the mechanics of practice models that operate in the community dentistry space.
Dana Watson – Writing Programs
Community-Engaged Science (a writing-intensive course)
This course intends to brings students out into the field more than the lab, getting them to (first notice and then) engage with the urban nature of Southern California. In addition to experience working on a community-science project, this writing-intensive course will explore several ways of keeping a field notebook, read samples of field notebooks and other nature writing, require students to regularly write short updates on their ongoing work with a community science project or organization, and finally ask students to write a fairly lengthy essay on a topic related to their project.
Amber West – Writing Programs
Professional Writing: Nonprofits and Public Engagement
This course will be a community-engaged version of English Composition 130D (Professional Writing: Nonprofits and Public Engagement). Students will work with community partner organizations on projects requested by the organizations, such as grant applications, prospecting research reports, blog articles, and social media assets. The department will also explore offering this course in fall, winter, and spring, with multiple partners.
Elizabeth Yzquierdo and Sarah Blenner – Fielding School of Public Health
Public Health Leadership, Fund Development and Diversity
The course will be offered for graduate health professional students that focuses on leadership, community engagement and fund development. The goal of the course is to apply, discuss and analyze various principles of leadership, approaches and policies as it applies to community mobilization, resource management in the delivery of healthcare and educational programs in under resourced communities.