150 wide

Learning & Service

The Office of Community Engaged Learning & Service is a one-stop shop for resources related to connecting students, courses, and faculty scholarship to the community. Community Engaged Learning (CEL) is an instructional strategy that refers to community activities that are integrated with course content to provide enriching, experiential learning opportunities that address the public good.

At Drake, we recognize that CEL extends beyond traditional service-learning and may include a field experience, practicum, internship, capstone, research project, clinical, co-op, or co-curricular activity. The experience may be a direct service/activity, or research, or other off-site work that benefits a community partner. See Our Philosophy for specific definitions of service-learning, community engagement, etc.

Our Mission Statement:
The mission of the Office of Community Engaged Learning is to develop and encourage changemakers who know themselves, understand the complexities of the world they live in, and take creative action to solve problems.

Our Learning Outcomes:

As a result of participating in a community-engaged learning opportunity at Drake, students will be able to…

1. Know themselves

Articulate what one cares about and why, and reflect upon how they present themselves in the world
Analyze one’s privilege and positionality and its impact on people and communities

2. Understand the world is complex

Identify social problems and their root causes while reflecting on the complexity of social issues
Explore and analyze social issues at the systems level while recognizing the historical and social context

3. Take Creative Action – what’s next?

Articulate that social change must be done in partnership with community stakeholders and fulfill a community-identified need
Recognize that there are a multitude of strategies needed to create social change and reflect on the effectiveness and utility of strategies
Take creative action to address social problems, and enable others to act