In addition to supporting faculty in the development and teaching of community-engaged courses, CELO staff can also help faculty take their practice deeper.

This may include building a stronger network within an academic department, connecting with other faculty or departments around a shared interest area, or enriching exsiting scholarship with a focus on service-learning and community engagement. A few resources are below, but please contact us if you would like to discuss your own ideas in more detail.

 

Dialogue Groups

CELO has convened groups of faculty with similar research and teaching interest areas, including publicly-engaged art & design, refugees/New Americans, and sustainability. These groups are intended to increase coordination among these faculty, deepen collaboration with community partners, and provide opportunities for faculty to reflect on best practices in community engagement. If you would like to suggest or co-convene a group, please contact Susan Munkres (susan.munkres@uvm.edu).

 

Resources & Ethical Considerations in Working with Refugees

Burlington is a designated Refugee Resettlement Community, and we find that many UVM students are interested in working with, or conducting research on, refugee populations in the area. Our students are rightly concerned and eager to engage; we want to support them in doing so. Those of us engaged in service-learning and community-engaged research recognize that the needs of our students for learning, growth and development must be considered in the broader context of the needs of our community. We want our students to be as fully prepared as they can before working with vulnerable populations and within overtaxed organizations.

This document lays out some of the considerations faculty should take when advising students interested in working with these populations, and lays out some resources that both faculty and students might find useful. We would also be happy to discuss these issues in greater detail; please don't hesitate to contact us.

 

CELO Partnership and Scholarship Development Grants

CELO is now offering larger grants to support the deepening of existing partnerships, which could yield increased benefits to community partners, faculty, and students. This grant is open to all Faculty Fellows for Community-Engaged Learning. Grants will be reviewed 3 times a year, but contact CELO at any time with ideas or questions. Grants also support the development of research on service-learning pedagogy at UVM.

 

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)

Research and scholarly activity has been directed at teaching for decades, with the development of entire bodies of knowledge about teaching effectiveness both as a discipline, and as subfields within existing disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation defines the scholarship of teaching and learning as "problem posing about an issue of teaching or learning, study of the problem through methods appropriate to the disciplinary epistemologies, applications of results to practice, communication of results, self-reflection, and peer review." Faculty at UVM have published research in peer-reviewed journals about their service-learning, both within the broader field, and within their disciplinary fields. CELO is happy to provide resources, orientation to the field, referrals to appropriate conferences and professional development opportunities and the like.

 

Engaged Practices Innovation Grant

PLEASE NOTE: EPI Grants are currently not being offered; please check back for the possibility of future awards -- we'll post the information here.

This grant from the Provost’s office is intended to fund new teaching initiatives aimed at promoting student retention and engagement at UVM. Since service-learning is a documented high-impact practice (contact us for references), teaching innovations involving service-learning of all stripes — community-based research, project-based and direct service — are strong candidates for this grant. CELO staff are happy to consult and provide letters of support, if appropriate. Funded service-learning courses (some of which we supported with letters or consultation on the grant process) include:

  • Engaging Co-Learning Through Participatory Action Research (Fall 2017)
  • Birding to Change the World (Spring 2016)
  • Asian Languages: Engaged Teaching for Engaged Learning (Fall 2015)

To look at these proposals, the notification letter and additional materials, see the Funded EPI Grants.