The Center for Community Engagement creates opportunities for UCLA faculty, students, and staff to collaborate with community partners to build an equitable and just society through community-engaged research, teaching and community programs.
Milestones & Recognition
Community engaged scholarship at UCLA has received national recognition. In 2020, Million Dollar Hoods was recognized in the “Exemplary Work” category and in 2021, the Congo Basin Institute received the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award. These awards are coordinated by the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities and the Engagement Scholarship Consortium.
Congo Basin Institute
Million Dollar Hoods
UCLA has received the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, an elective designation that indicates institutional commitment to community engagement by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, please visit this link.
CCE’s Evolving Impact
1980
The Office of Field Studies is established to support academic engagement beyond the classroom.
1988
The Community-Based Learning Program (precursor to the current CCE Community Youth Programs) was created within the Office of Field Studies as a vehicle to bring the resources of the university to the under-served communities of Los Angeles.
2001-2003
The Office of Field Studies becomes the Center for Experiential Education and Service-Learning. It will later be renamed the Center for Community Learning.
UCLA creates an SL course suffix to designate service-learning courses.
2004
The Center helps secure funding to launch JusticeCorps in Los Angeles County, funded by the California Judicial Branch and an AmeriCorps grant.
2006
The Civic Engagement minor launches.
2008
The Center co-leads efforts that result in the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching awarding UCLA the newly created elective classification “community engagement.”
2009
The Astin Community-Engaged Scholars program begins, recognizing the groundbreaking research of UCLA scholars Sandy and Lena Astin on the value of civic engagement for students’ personal and intellectual development.
The Center secures funding through AmeriCorps to launch the Jumpstart program, which sends teams of students into lower-income preschools to support early literacy.
2011
The Center establishes 195CE internship courses, in which students enroll to earn academic credit and deepen the learning experience of their internship.
2017
The Center launches the Changemaker Scholars program with a focus on youth civic engagement.
2019
The Civic Engagement minor is redesigned as the Community Engagement & Social Change minor, providing undergraduates with opportunities for sustained community-engaged work integrated into an academic social justice framework.
The Center’s Engaging Los Angeles course grows from an annual course once-a-year offering with 80 students to being offered three quarters each year, with 120 students per quarter placed with over 50 community partner organizations.
The Center launches the Chancellor’s Award for Community-Engaged Scholars, which supports an annual cohort of five UCLA ladder faculty to design new community-engaged courses that integrate undergraduate students into their research program.
2020
The Undergraduate Council approves the Center’s new, expansive framework for “community-engaged courses,” recognizing the wide range of pedagogies employed at UCLA and stimulating faculty interest more broadly across the curriculum.
The Center launches Collaboratory, an online platform to highlight, track and assess UCLA’s community-engaged activities.
The Center for Community Learning becomes the Center for Community Engagement to emphasize the collaborative, reciprocal nature of the work between the university and community partners and to signal the expanded role that the Center now plays to advance UCLA’s public mission.
The Center becomes the administrative home to the UCLA Quarter in Washington program, connecting study and research in the nation’s capital with internship experience.
The Center, in partnership with the humanities and social sciences divisions, receives a $5M grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to launch a new Social Justice Curriculum. This initiative includes the Data Justice Scholars Program, a digital open-source tool called the LA Data Justice Hub, an introductory course for freshmen titled “Data, Society, and Society,” and new course development grants for faculty.
2021
The Center initiates the Summer Internship Scholarship, to increase student access to experiential learning, support career preparation, and help offset potential financial hardships associated with a summer unpaid internship.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center provides leadership to departments and faculty to facilitate the transition from on-site to remote community-engaged teaching and learning. The Center empowers UCLA students to help community organizations address their pandemic-related needs and deliver services.
2023
The Center creates and convenes its Community Partners Council to integrate our network of non-profit organization partners into the development and assessment of our programs.
Together with Student Affairs, CCE has launched a new UCLA Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Network to promote communication and coordination among academic and student affairs units and student organizations.
UCLA launches its new Strategic Plan 2023-28. The Center was named as lead unit for implementing Goal 1: Deepen UCLA’s Engagement with Los Angeles.
2024
The Center collaborated with the newly appointed Special Advisor to the Executive Vice Chancellor/Provost for Community-Engaged Scholarship to create UCLA’s Community Engagement Advisors Network and the UCLA-LA Community Engagement Council to facilitate greater communication and coordination within UCLA and between UCLA and the broader LA community.
The Center launches new funding programs to support the development of new community-engaged courses, build departmental capacity to sustain community partnerships for their community-engaged courses, and fund Social Impact Collaboratives—interdisciplinary community-engaged research to achieve social impact.
With support through the UCLA Strategic Plan, the Center was able to reduce the economic barriers that disproportionately disadvantaged lower income students from being able to pursue unpaid summer internships by creating an 84% tuition reduction for summer internship courses.
The Center launches a Student Advisory Committee composed of student leaders from the Community Engagement and Social Change Minor. One of the main goals of the committee is to ensure that students have a voice in the development of policies and processes.
The Jumpstart program transitions to Student Affairs.