The Public Service Center supports faculty and graduate student instructors in developing community-engaged learning courses. We also work with advisors and other staff to share relevant public service opportunities for your students.
Support for Faculty
American Cultures Engaged Scholarship Program
The Public Service Center partners with the American Cultures Center to support faculty in developing new or revised American Cultures courses that integrate community-engaged learning and scholarship. Faculty are selected as Chancellor’s Public Scholars and can receive grants, training, staff consulting services, community partner funds, and a paid student fellow to support the development of the community partnership project. Applications are released up to two times per year and will be available on the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) webpage.
Additional Support for Course Development
The Public Service Center provides a comprehensive Toolkit for Designing Community-Based Courses, which you can use as a starting point.
We can also assist you with:
- Identifying placement sites for your students
- Setting up community partnerships
- Exploring best practices for preparing students to engage with communities
- Guiding you through campus requirements, including experiential learning guidelines for risk management
- Incorporating ways to sustain the course and/or project
- Connecting you with colleagues in the fields of engaged scholarship and community-engaged learning
Other Resources
- Center for Teaching and Learning: supports UC Berkeley faculty in course development
- Campus Compact: a coalition with resources in support of campus civic engagement
- Community-Campus Partnerships for Health: offers resources for health partnerships
- Imagining America, Artists & Scholars in Public Life: offers reports for community-engaged arts, design, and humanities
- TRUCEN: this network of Research 1 institutions offers an Engaged Scholarship Toolkit and models for student engagement
Access
Please note that community-engaged learning experiences in courses must include options accessible to students with disabilities. The Disabled Students Program is available to help resolve any challenges involving students with disabilities, including issues related to off-campus activities and wheelchair access.
Resources for Staff
Sign up for our monthly student updates to know about public service opportunities for your students. (Sign up through “Sign Up for Student Updates” sidebar on the right.)
Plan a one-time volunteer event for your department/team using our best practices for a one-time event (PDF).
Find a volunteer opportunity for yourself in the community through the VolunteerMatch database.
“When we draw the box around water in the Central Valley that contains nitrate, we don’t look at undocumented laborers, we don’t look at substandard housing, we don’t look at that larger picture because that’s not what our training tells us to do. We are there to deal with nitrate in drinking water. I started unpacking that in my own work and started asking about the bigger picture.”
Khalid Kadir, PhD
Chancellor’s Public Scholar, 2014 Chancellor’s Award for Public Service for Service-Learning Leadership, 2017 Distinguished Teaching Award
ACES Course: Engineering, the Environment, and Society
Read more about Dr. Kadir’s engaged scholarship course in Berkeley Engineer (PDF).