Cornell’s David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement is excited to offer a new online program for faculty and staff interested in incorporating community-engaged learning (CEL) into a course or program. This online program is designed for any level of experience — whether participants are brand new to community-engaged learning or are experienced practitioners looking to refresh their skills and discover new tools.

Flexibility
Select Courses Based on Your Interests & Goals
Effort
3 to 4 hours Per Course
Toolkit
Downloadable Tools & Resources

Through five self-paced courses, participants will get an overview of community-engaged learning (CEL) theory and practice, and will understand how CEL can augment learning in any course, curriculum, and/or co-curricular program. Participants can apply the foundations of CEL practice to their own syllabi or programs with downloadable tools and adaptable sample activities.

Participants can complete all five courses or they can focus on the topics most relevant to their course or program.

Each course takes three to four hours to complete. Faculty and staff who complete all five courses will earn a Recognition of Achievement credential. 

  • In Building a Better World with Community-Engaged Learning, faculty and staff will define high quality CEL; identify their motivations, purpose, and goals; discern the value of CEL for their course or program; and begin to incorporate CEL tools and activities.
  • They’ll continue to build a CEL toolkit in Developing, Understanding and Strengthening Cultural Humility with tools and activities to improve students’ cultural self-awareness and enhance their ability to apply cultural humility in interpersonal and institutional relationships, to communicate across difference, and to adapt to community contexts through CEL.
  • Supporting Partnerships will assist participants in developing an asset-based mindset to support reciprocal, mutually beneficial, and sustainable Campus-Community partnerships.
  • Fostering Critical Reflection in Community Engagement explores concepts and practices in critical reflection, and provides the tools to facilitate and encourage deeper learning for students participating in CEL.
  • Finally, Cultivating Community-Engaged Learning and Leadership focuses on strategies for cultivating CEL leadership among faculty, staff, and students, from individual actions to becoming a change agent within the institution, with the communities they work with and beyond.

Cornell University faculty members, staff and student CEL TAs/course facilitators:

  • Faculty and/or staff — from any department or discipline — who want students to have an interactive experience with their learning
  • Faculty and/or staff who want to make an impact through partnerships with communities outside the classroom — locally, regionally, nationally, or internationally
  • Faculty and/or staff whose research focuses on community-engaged learning
  • Students who serve as TAs and/or facilitators in CEL courses

 

For questions about the program, please email einhorncenter@cornell.edu

The student version of the CEL courses is tailored specifically for students and is meant to complement the faculty and staff version somewhat like a companion workbook. Faculty and staff can gain valuable insights by viewing the courses from a student’s perspective. This experience allows them to understand how course materials are presented to students, asses the user-friendliness of the platform, identify any potential areas for improvement and ask students to complete assignments, tools and exercises in the student version. By stepping into the students’ shoes, faculty and staff can better align their teaching strategies with the students’ needs, ultimately enhancing the overall learning experience. For this reason, we encourage you to enroll in both the Faculty/Staff and Student versions of the course(s) you will use.