How can Faculty Get Involved in Community Engagement

The National Service Learning Clearing House defines Service Learning as “a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility and strengthen communities.”
SUPPORT FOR FACULTY IN OFFERING A SERVICE LEARNING COURSE
The Office of Community Engagement team is available to support faculty and departments as they work to integrate Community Engagement and Service Learning into their course offerings. Please feel free to contact our office to schedule an appointment - (251) 460-6116.
ONLINE RESOURCES:
Campus Compact Toolkit Modules: Designing & Delivering a Service-Learning Course by Dr. Matt Roy (Assistant Provost & Director of the Leduc Center for Civic Engagement, UMASS Dartmouth) and Dr. Dwight Giles (Professor, College of Education and Human Development and Senior Associate with the New England Resource Center for Higher Education): https://compact.org/resource-posts/designing-delivering-a-service-learning-course/
The following conferences occur annually and offer opportunities for presentation of original scholarship along with professional development around Community Engagement and Service Learning. Please follow the links below to identify conference specific calls for proposals.
- Annual Conference of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU)
- The Engagement Scholarship Consortium Annual Conference
- Imagining America National Conference
- The Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching
- International Association for Research on Service-Leaning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE)
- National Service-Learning Conference
The following is a list of peer reviewed journals that offer faculty, staff, community partners and students the opportunity to submit work for publication:
- Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement
- Journal of Community Engagement and Higher Education
- The International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community
- Journal of Community Engagement & Scholarship
- Public: A Journal of Imagining America
- Progress in Community Health Partnerships
The federal government posts grant opportunities through grants.gov which often require community engagement as a component of the calls for proposal. In addition, the following entities provide regular opportunities to apply for funding to support community engaged scholarly work and research:
National Foundations:
The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Local and Regional Funders:
The Community Foundation of South Alabama
Request training on SOUTH SERVES by emailing communityengagement@southalabama.edu.