What is Academic Community Engagement?
Academic community engagement, often referred to as service-learning, is a pedagogical approach that integrates academic instruction with meaningful community engagement and service. Ideally, it allows students to apply classroom theories to real-world challenges while fostering civic responsibility, critical thinking, and personal growth through structured reflection. Its core components include:
- Academic Connection: the service is directly tied to a specific course curriculum and its learning objectives.
- Community Relevance: the service addresses a genuine, community-identified need rather than a fabricated project.
- Structured Reflection: students participate in guided discussions, journals, or assignments to analyze their service experience and connect it back to what they learned in class.
A course “attribute designator” for academic community engagement is available for faculty and departments that would like to formally declare and list courses and instructional modules that contain the above components.
Academic Community Engagement Procedures and Timelines
If you are interested in offering a course that utilizes academic community engagement, please:
- Consult with your chair about your planned course, and then
- Email a copy of your syllabus to Dr. Brent James (jamesba@appstate.edu) for feedback, or simply reach out to Dr. James to discuss your plans.
For courses that have already been approved for the designator in past semesters, here are the deadlines to submit your renewal request to the Office of Community-Engaged Leadership to have your course re-designated in the Schedule of Classes:
- For the Spring and Summer semesters: September 15
- For the Fall semester: February 14
Resources for Faculty
The attached Google Shared Drive contains the following resources to help you plan your course:
- Learning Objectives Potentially Related to Service-Learning
- Potential Student Learning Outcomes for Service-Learning Courses
- Service Learning Definitions and Principles of Good Practice
- Syllabus Review Checklist
- Reflection in Service Learning: Making Meaning of Experience
- And more!