Each year, CELO presents community-engaged learning awards to faculty, students and community partners for their leadership in creating transformative learning experiences that address community priorities and goals. Students prepare for their lives after graduation by deploying their academic skills in ways that contribute to positive community outcomes. Roughly 50 faculty members and up to 200 community partners create approximately 100 community-engaged courses annually. In 2022, 45% of graduating seniors had completed a designated SL (service learning) and/or CL (civic learning) course. On April 13th, we gathered for our annual CELO Awards Ceremony to honor some of the people exemplifying this high-impact practice.
We are pleased to recognize Cherie Morse (Geography) as this year’s recipient of the Lynne Bond Outstanding Community-Engaged Faculty Award. This award honors faculty with a long-standing commitment to community-engaged teaching, whose pedagogy demonstrates responsiveness to community priorities, attention to meaningful student learning, reciprocal community relationships, and creating significant projects that benefit students and community partners alike.
In the last ten years, Cherie has taught at least 10 designated community-engaged courses, across a range of different disciplines and with community partners throughout the state: Jericho Research Forest, the Town of Greensboro, Chittenden Solid Waste District, Hunger Free Vermont, The Burlington Reparations Task Force, Franklin Grand Isle Community Action, and UVM Special Collections, to name a few. The priorities that these community partners identify drive her students’ research and service-learning projects, yet she is always careful to ensure these projects meet important student learning outcomes that are unique to each course.
Cherie has developed long-standing relationships with community-engaged teaching practitioners at UVM. She went through CELO’s Faculty Fellows for Community-Engaged Learning program in 2015, served for several years on CELO’s Advisory Committee, and was previously recognized with CELO’s Outstanding New Community-Engaged Faculty Award. Her colleague Meghan Cope – who nominated he for this year’s award – first worked with Cherie when they co-taught the community-engaged Global Childhoods course in 2007. As she notes in her nomination:
“This served as my introduction to Cherie’s amazing ability to combine rigorous instruction, interdisciplinary approaches, and hands-on experiences to create unique opportunities for students to engage with learning and practice. In the sixteen years since that course, I have continually been impressed with Cherie’s commitment and creativity in generating such approaches to high-impact pedagogies, community partnerships, and a deep commitment to students’ own blossoming.”
Cherie’s commitment to both her students and to the State of Vermont shines through in all of her work as an educator and academic. Her approach as a geographer emphasizes research and scholarship that responds to the needs of Vermonters, and she consistently demonstrates a commitment to teaching that makes a positive difference in the communities connected to UVM, embodying the institution’s land grant mission while developing the next generation of engaged citizens.