Students

Civic Engagement Academy

Do you believe you have a responsibility to think about the role you play in your community? Are you involved with any groups that have organized to improve the quality of life or the functioning of your community? Are you drawn to “making a difference?” Are you interested in exploring ways in which your education, employment, and role in your community can make a positive and measurable difference?

If you believe “What we do MATTERS,” welcome to the Civic Engagement Learning Academy—a community of students and faculty linked together by our interest in being engaged citizens and empowering our communities.

Definition of Civic Engagement: Civic Engagement (CE) has many meanings. Today, CE includes “community service,” “service learning,” or social action, but is larger in scope. Essentially, CE is “being involved” in the life of a community. CE can take the form of serving or responding to an issue as an individual, with others in the community, or through interactions with community agencies or institutions. The goal of CE is to make practical contributions to a community’s development, growth, and functioning, and to serve the “public good.”

The Civic Engagement Academy promotes and encourages you to become an active, reflective, and critically thinking citizen within your communities. Under the direction of Academic Director Peter Sobota, Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work, you will:

  • Link coursework to practical, concrete experiences which improves your community (making learning “real”)
  • Develop a personal philosophy of civic engagement and leadership through critical thinking about social issues, reflection and practice
  • Analyze different modes of leadership
  • Understand how relationships and power, related to class, race and gender, shape perspectives and strategies within agencies and organizations
  • Embrace opportunities and methods for self-reflection
  • Improve your ability to work with diverse groups and individuals
  • Understand how research universities contribute to community improvement
  • Actively participate in a civic engagement project

Seminar Courses

The Civic Engagement (CE) Academy offers two different seminars, a beginning seminar and an advanced seminar.

  • Explore how individuals and communities make change, and empower themselves to do so
  • Provide theoretical, conceptual, and ethical frameworks for assessing, intervening, and evaluating outcomes in communities
  • Explore what the roles and responsibilities of individual citizens as members and leaders of communities should be in the change process
  • Discuss and analyze public policy at the grassroots level, the relationship between funding and social change, communication and coalition-building, and leadership development

Beginning Seminar Sample Syllabus

Civic Engagement Seminar (PDF)

Civic Engagement Academy Faculty & Staff