Beyond the Classroom: Redesigning Your Course for Community Engagement

Every course has a door into the world outside the classroom — this workshop helps you find it. Bring a course you already teach, in any discipline, and leave with a concrete plan to convert it into a Community Engaged Liberal Arts & Sciences (CELAS) course. CELAS courses link coursework to community partnerships so students test theory against practice — developing creative, practical responses to social, cultural, and scientific problems alongside the organizations and neighbors they already have access to.

Facilitated by Erin Cannan, Vice President for Civic Engagement at Bard College, the workshop will focus on:

• The partnership fit — matching your course content to a community organization, agency, or program your students can realistically reach
• The engagement activity — designing fieldwork, a project, or a collaboration that deepens your existing learning goals
• The reflection loop — building in the structured reflection that turns a site visit into scholarship
• The redesign itself — leaving with revised assignments and activities ready to pilot

Designed for in-person and online courses — the workshop will cover how to adapt engagement activities, from on-site partnerships to virtual collaborations. No prior experiential-learning background is required. Just come with a course and a willingness to rethink some of your assignments.

Faculty who complete a CELAS redesign can include their course among those available to fulfill requirements for the GHEA21 Civic Engagement Certificate. 

Register to join via Zoom