Grants for Community-Engaged Courses (CECs)

The EXL Center at UA is pleased to be able to offer small grants (up to $1000 each) to support UA courses that incorporate community engagement through community-based research and/or service-learning.

For an instructor to receive funding, the course must include all enrolled students in some form of engagement with local or regional community partners (Akron and Northeast Ohio).

Grant guidelines and application

• Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis each semester until funds are depleted. Please allow 2-3 weeks for processing and evaluation.

Past Community-Engaged Courses

Principles of Social Media

In Dr. Amber Ferris' class students learned and applied Principles of Social Media by working with and fundraising for the Central American Medical Outreach (CAMO) non-profit organization in Orrville, OH.

The course focused on social media events, social media boosting/ advertising, and the challenges of turning social media engagement into real life engagement.

Students successfully planned a fundraising event and created a media campaign for the organization.

Legal Aspects of Corrections

Dr. Pat Millhoff’s Legal Aspects of Corrections class involved engagement with incarcerated women and their teenaged children at Northeast Ohio Reintegration Center.

While focusing on their curricular content, the students found the lived experiences of the women and their children contextualized their course material revealing the complexities and ambiguities.

After an event at the Center in which students met with women and children, four women came from the prison to campus to talk further with the class.

Foundations of Museums & Archives

Dr. Jodi Kearns’ students in Foundations of Museums & Archives I, processed two archival collections from beginning to end, from opening unprocessed boxes and original sorting to creating series and writing the finding aid. This course used CEC funding for the archival supplies.

An important product of this semester-long work is that the Bernard Saper papers and the Sidney Bijou papers are now open and available to researchers onsite at the Cummings Center for the History of Psychology.

Below are links to the students’ work and these two newly-available collections.

The Triumph of Humor: Bernard Saper Papers Available

Sidney Bijou Papers Open for Research