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 2024); and
- A once-per-quarter meeting over Academic Year 2024-25 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 2025.
- Participation in the September 2025 “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 2025-26 or 2026-27 academic years.
TO APPLY
Submit the following items to communityengagement@college.ucla.edu by Monday, April 1, 2024:
- 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 2025-26 or 2026-27.
- 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, 2024. Funds will be transferred at the start of the new fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2024. All funds should be used by the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 2025.
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 Dean and Executive Director
- Doug Barrera, PhD., Associate Director for Faculty and Community Engagement