FYS-CEL Community Engaged Learning courses give students the opportunity to build community with each other while exploring some of the complex issues impacting societies today.
Ready to teach your FYS-CEL Community Engaged Learning?
STEP 1: Consult with FYS staff at fys@ucdavis.edu to plan your FYS-CEL Community Engaged Learning seminar
STEP 2: Submit a course proposal by the seminar proposal deadline
STEP 3: FYS will promote your FYS-CEL Community Engaged Learning seminar to all incoming students at each summer orientation and throughout the academic year!
UC Davis seeks to provide educational experiences for students that prepare them to address the needs and challenges of a diverse and changing world. First Year Seminars on Community Engaged Learning are a primary step towards this goal. Through these courses, faculty can help new Aggies learn about community engagement methods, theories, and practices that equip them to collaboratively address community-identified topics, issues, and/or concerns.
Community engaged learning is an approach that:
- Addresses a community’s specific need, problem or common concern;
- Is typically done in collaboration with a community partner (i.e., an organization, group, or individual that comes from the community you’re working with);
- Connects this collaboration with course content; and
- Includes ongoing and documented reflection.
These seminars will touch on some of these elements, providing an introduction to aspects of community engaged learning.
Community-engaged learning and first year seminars are both documented high-impact practices that particularly benefit underrepresented students. Therefore, the first-year seminars offered within this theme will not only prepare and inspire students to address social justice issues alongside community partners, but will also position students to thrive in their future academic and professional pursuits.
While these seminars need not meet all the requirements of a CEL course as defined above, they should provide students with the opportunity to:
- Identify systemic barriers to equity and inclusiveness;
- Create responsive solutions and strategies that support community goals;
- Learn how to engage cooperatively with others, including people different from themselves and/or with different points of view;
- AND/OR Practice critical reflection and principled action.
Note that FYS courses on Community Engaged Learning need not meet all of these learning objectives.
Ready to Propose a FYS-CEL Community Engaged Learning Seminar?
If you are interested in teaching a FYS-CEL Community Engaged Learning Seminar, please reach out to fys@ucdavis.edu before submitting your proposal. We will help create or review your syllabus.