Each year, with the support for the Division for Faculty Affairs, CELO (Community-Engaged Learning Office) presents the Community-Engaged Learning Awards. Community-engaged learning is central to UVM's fulfillment of the land-grant mission, and these awards recognize excellence in community-engaged learning, honoring community collaborators, faculty instructors, and student leaders. These dedicated individuals contribute to transformative learning experiences for UVM students that simultaneously address community priorities and goals, as students prepare for their lives after graduation by deploying their academic skills within community partnerships.

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, 2023, CELO held its annual awards ceremony to honor some of the people exemplifying this high-impact practice. 

CELO is pleased to recognize Luben Dimov (Forestry) as an Outstanding New Community-Engaged Learning Faculty Award winner.  

Luben was a 2020 Faculty Fellow for Community-Engaged Learning, and among his many Forestry courses, he has taught Forestry 112: Natural Restoration Ecology & Assessment five times using community-engaged pedagogy. In this course, students apply principles of forest ecology and measurements to forest ecosystems to inform ecologically and socially just stewardship.

To meet these learning goals, Luben has developed an ongoing partnership with the Chittenden County Forester, Ethan Tapper, to help him inventory the ecological conditions in several Town Forests across the county. Typically these inventories are far too time-consuming and costly for a single forester to integrate into their workload, so this partnership has provided a highly beneficial service to Ethan – and to Vermont Forests, Parks & Recreation – in updating their stewardship plans for these forests. At the same time, the project has provided Luben’s students with an incredible real-world context to apply the principles they are learning in the classroom, while connecting them with an valuable professional mentor in Ethan.

A hallmark of the partnership is Luben’s steadfast commitment to ensuring that his students’ efforts are benefitting his community partner: building into the project several opportunities for feedback on student progress, adjusting the deliverables based on shifting partner priorities, and working with Ethan before, during, and after each semester to determine how future iterations of the course can be improved.

Both in his department and at UVM as a whole, Luben epitomizes how community-engaged teaching and learning can provide reciprocal benefit to his students and the broader communities to which UVM is connected. We appreciate the his ongoing efforts, and are delighted to recognize him with this award.