service learning

E-Corps Two-Part Workshop at the UConn Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

group of girls at a table

Please join your UConn colleagues for two one-hour virtual CETL workshops in April on:

The Environment Corps: an engaged scholarship model that combines classroom instruction, service learning, and Extension (an act in two parts)

Workshop Description:
A partnership at UConn that reaches across college and departmental lines is engaged in a project that seeks to enhance, expand, institutionalize, and study a new model for experiential learning and community engagement. The model, called the Environment Corps (“E-Corps”), combines familiar elements of classroom instruction, service learning, and extension outreach to create a method of engagement that aims to benefit students, faculty, surrounding communities, and the university community itself. This two-part series will review E-Corps structure, operation, results, and early lessons learned.

Part One will focus on course design, faculty development, and pedagogical strategies for engaged student learning; attendees will hear from instructors and students of the three current E-Corps courses.
Friday, April 9, 2:00 – 3:00 pm                   Focus on the Classroom
REGISTER HERE

Part Two will focus on building community partnerships and designing appropriate student projects, including several examples; attendees will hear from additional instructors and our municipal “clients.” Both sessions will set aside ample time for discussion.
Friday, April 23, 2:00 – 3:00 pm             Focus on Community Projects
REGISTER HERE

https://ecorps.initiative.uconn.edu/

UConn Climate Corps

GPSUConn Extension’s Chet Arnold, Juliana Barrett and Bruce Hyde are part of a team that received funding from the University as part of the Academic Plan Proposal Awards. Other team members include: Mark Boyer (Geography), Maria Chrysochoou (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Sylvain DeGuise (Pathobiology), and John Volin (Natural Resources and the Environment).

This project will create the UConn Climate Corps, an undergraduate program built upon a new 3-credit course and a subsequent 3 -credit practicum during which students will assist Connecticut communities in adapting to climate change. During the internship, student teams will work closely with Extension faculty mentors to directly engage town officials; the students will collect and present information that will be used by towns as they plan for climate resiliency. The Climate Corps will contribute significantly to the Sustainability and Resilience Strategic Area of the Academic Plan, serve as a high profile facet of the University’s public engagement portfolio, and provide a real world service learning experience and work force development for high-achieving students in environmentally related programs, including the Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, and Environmental Engineering programs.