Contributed/ETSU

Each year, ETSU adds courses that do more than fill classrooms; they connect students with the community. Community Engaged Learning (CEL) Designated Courses allow students to gain practical experience while giving back.

CEL-designated courses at ETSU are built on four core elements: mutually beneficial relationships with a community partner; instructional intent linking the partnership to student learning; critical reflection that connects students to the needs of the community partner; and feedback that guides further development.

“They’re about allowing our students to actually see what they’re talking about in the classroom space and connecting it to the lives of our community members,” Scott Jenkinson, the Center for Community Engagement faculty fellow.

The CEL-designated courses offered at ETSU expand and grow every year. Now, there is a CEL-designated course in every college at ETSU. The classes, often reserved for the 3000 or 4000 level, have been reaching more freshman and sophomore students.

“For example, this semester, we’re piloting five sections of ETSU 1020 that have a community engagement component in them,” Jenkinson said. “ETSU 1020 is partnering this semester with Visit JC. And our students are doing some work specifically around how Johnson City is viewed as a community and how college students see the community space and connect with it.”

Jenkinson pointed to a partnership with the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital as one of the most interesting partnerships.

“The students in the class are working to develop a virtual reality training simulation for pediatric nurses at the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, to train the nurses how to put in emergency tracheotomies,” Jenkinson said.

The assessment component of all ETSU CEL designated courses highlights the impact these classes have on students. It also helps students work on their future aspirations, relationships and impact.

“I have the fortunate opportunity of supporting a community engaged learning study abroad opportunity,” Jenkinson said. “We take pre-service teachers to primary schools in rural Scotland…our students are able to really transform their ideas about what it is to teach and become educators that are adept at navigating different cultural spaces.”

These courses have been commended through ETSU’s recently received Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement. CEL designated courses transform students, but they also help transform the community partners.

“What we’re seeing is an increase and a depth of relationship with community partners. Community partners are understanding what ETSU’s doing, they’re coming to ETSU with questions and they’re coming to ETSU with projects in mind,” Jenkinson said.

ETSU now shares its CEL designated course model at professional organizations, such as the Engagement Scholarship Consortium.

“It’s hard work for both the students, the faculty members and the staff members that are leading those courses. But, I think, as a high impact teaching practice, it is a meaningful pedagogy that encourages our students to challenge themselves to understand their learning is not finite. It is genuinely infinite,” Jenkinson said.

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