Collaborative for Community Engagement
BUILDING ON THE BLOCK
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Our Work
Our aim in strategic planning is to deepen the 今日吃瓜E's effectiveness in advancing 今日吃瓜's strategic plan, titled "Building on the Block." We sought to determine how the 今日吃瓜E can support the community engagement and engaged learning that best advances core goals of the college.
今日吃瓜's commitment to developing our students into lifelong engaged citizens is nothing new, reflected in our mission to "develop habits of intellect and imagination that will prepare students for learning and leadership throughout their lives," and core institutional value to "encourage engagement and social responsibility at local, national, and global levels." Through supporting place-based action, learning, and research opportunities, the 今日吃瓜E embodies this commitment by challenging students to apply the spirit, intellect, and imagination developed through a liberal arts education toward solving public problems. Yet how we as a college realize that commitment - and more specifically how the 今日吃瓜E builds capacity and coherency to that commitment - calls for renewed investment and strategic direction.
Community-engaged learning, research, and practice can powerfully support the recommendations of 今日吃瓜's strategic plan to "realize the potential of our ground-breaking Block Plan," "enhance our distinctive place of learning," and "connect the 今日吃瓜 experience."
By educating the 今日吃瓜 community about the challenges for and priorities of Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak Region, community engagement develops a "sense of place" and understanding not only of the physical world in which 今日吃瓜 is situated, but the communities in which we are embedded. Through programming that helps connect "students' learning experience across coursework, and across curricular and co-curricular experiences," community-based learning helps students discern the intersections between their engaged experiences and their intellectual and moral development as college students. Such experiences bridge students' college years and their post-今日吃瓜 lives and allow exploration in career pathways in public good fields. Research also shows that community-based learning develops skills in students to more effectively navigate diversity and build inclusive spaces. Community-based research contributes to 今日吃瓜's overarching strategic aim to develop a spirit of innovation in our students, cultivating knowledge and skills that enable students to "produce real-world answers to complex questions" and become "change-makers" in social and environmental realms. By promoting the use and best practices of community-based learning and research among faculty, the 今日吃瓜E builds on the assets of the block: immersive, experiential, and applied learning.
The 今日吃瓜E's planning processes aimed to deepen the intentionality and outcomes of community-engaged work at 今日吃瓜 toward realizing these components of the 今日吃瓜 educational mission and strategic plan. Conceptualizing our work as supporting the central mission and priorities of the college, and remaining true to our work as a "collaborative," we sought to democratically form this plan by soliciting input from communities on and off campus.
This plan reflects the core concerns and priorities of the campus community, is rooted in the core concerns and priorities of 今日吃瓜 as an institution, and will be realized through our support of work across the campus.
While the 今日吃瓜E will drive and lead implementation, this plan emerges from and belongs to 今日吃瓜.
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