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Community-Based and Community-Engaged Learning Courses

Students can take courses across majors that contain a Community-Based/Community-Engaged Learning component. Building upon the foundations established in CIVC 101, these courses provide students with an opportunity to combine classroom learning with community engagement and reflection to think critically and deeply about pressing social issues and real-world applications of academic learning. Learn more.

To view current and upcoming courses, please see below. Click here to see past term CBL/CEL courses. Questions? Please email Carrie Hutnick at cah426@drexel.edu. 

Winter Term 2023-2024

College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
Westphal DIGM 508 CRN: 24511 Digital Cultural Heritage Glen Muschio Wednesday 9:00am-11:50pm Community-Engaged Learning
Course Description
Digital Cultural Heritage is a growing transdisciplinary pursuit having components in academic research and applied situations, commercial applications, as well as new media technology development. This class will investigate Digital Cultural Heritage¿s position within the tradition of digital media discourse, potential research issues, interdisciplinary collaborations, emerging best practices and project development.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS GST 341 24873/td> Organization of American States Maria de la luz Matus-Mendoza Tuesday and Thursday 4:00pm-5:50pm Community-Engaged Learning
Course Description
This course is designed to prepare a diplomatic delegation of Drexel students representing a country in the Western Hemisphere to participate at a Model Organization of American States (WMOAS) in Washington, D.C. on April 8-12, 2024. The goals are (1) to acquire political, social, and economic knowledge of the represented country, which changes every year, and the Western Hemisphere, and (2) to prepare students to be able to use diplomatic protocol to participate at the Model OAS in Washington. This course is taught as a Global Classroom and a Community Based Learning class.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS WRIT 315 24048 Writing for Social Change Liz Kimball Monday and Wednesday 12:30pm-1:50pm Community-Engaged Learning
Course Description
Focusing on current social issues, students will explore the history and legacy of a particular social issue and learn from those working to change it. Students will write to reflect on the dimensions of change, practice with professional genres, and gather support to address the issue. This is a side-by-side, community-based learning course. Drexel students will work alongside staff from UESF, a Philadelphia organization committed to a holistic, preventive, and cost-efficient approach to assisting vulnerable families impacted by housing crises. On Mondays, the class will meet on Drexel's campus. On Wednesdays, the class will meet off-campus (1608 Walnut Street--UESF conference room).
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS WRIT 305 23684 Life Is Beautiful Kenneth Bingham Thursdays 3:30pm-4:50pm Community-Based Learning
Course Description
This community partnership course links memoir with life, story-telling, and dying. Specifically, the course partners students with local hospice patients to co-create a life-story for the patient and his or her family. Students learn interviewing, listening, and writing techniques as well as skills in analysis and presentation. Additionally, the course facilitates interactions with the community and helps students to see themselves as linked to a community outside of college.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS CJS 261-001 23697 Prison, Society, and You Cyndi Rickards Thursdays 12:30pm-4:20pm Community Based Learning
Course Description
This course utilizes the Inside-­Out Prison Exchange Program to explore the relationship between individuals and the prison system. The Inside-­Out Exchange Program is an evolving set of projects that creates opportunities for dialogue between those on the outside and those on the inside of the nation’s correctional facilities. The program demonstrates the potential for dynamic collaborations between institutions of higher education and correctional institutions. Most importantly, through this unique exchange, Inside-Out, this course seeks to deepen the conversation and transform ways of thinking about crime and justice (Crabbe, Pompa, 2004).
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS SPAN 440 24878 Spanish for Community-Conscious Engagement Octavio Borges-Delgado Thursdays 1:00pm-3:50pm Community Engaged Learning
Course Description
This course is designed to empower students with the language skills and cultural knowledge necessary to meaningfully engage in community outreach, service, or work within Spanish-speaking communities. This class goes beyond traditional language instruction, emphasizing real-world application and cultural competency. It focuses on fostering a thoughtful and aware approach to community engagement. Through interactive lessons and field experiences, students will develop the linguistic and cultural proficiency needed to communicate effectively, yet sensitively, while working, volunteering, or serving in Spanish-speaking environments. Whether participating in social outreach programs, educational projects, or healthcare initiatives, students will gain the confidence to bridge language barriers, thus fostering stronger connections and deeper understanding within the communities they serve. Taught in Spanish.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
Westphal URBS 610/ARCH T480 24551 Civic Engagement and Participatory Methods Andrew Zitcer and Susanna Gilbertson Mondays 6:00pm-8:50pm Side-By-Side
Course Description
This course examines the relationship between civic engagement, democratic participation and community change in urban settings. Students will gain awareness of themselves as leaders and members of a group. They will explore styles of facilitation, decision making in groups, and large and small forms of civic engagement. By the end of the course, students will be more competent and effective communicators, overcoming one of the largest shortcomings of contemporary urban practitioners. Students will discuss leadership in the context of consensus building – creating shared goals, negotiating on behalf of lay people and professional entities, facilitating community meetings and other decision-making forums, and the management of stakeholder expectations.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS WGST 201 25068 Introduction to Feminisms Jennifer Yusin Tuesdays 4:30-4:50pm Community-Based Learning
Course Description
Feminisms are movements to understand and critique gender relations and gender oppression, and also attempts to construct positive visions of human freedom and ethical action in an unjust world. This course is an introduction to the history of feminisms. The major movements that make up feminism in the modern era, in both the U.S. and abroad, will be examined.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CNHP HSAD-T380 25011 Ethics of Display Sharrona Pearl Monday 2:00-4:50pm Community-Engaged Learning
Course Description
This course is an opportunity to work directly in the Science History Institute Museum and archives to curate an exhibit that critically intervenes with the racialized histories and practices of museums and display. Students will gain hands-on experience working with primary sources in the museum¿s holdings to produce a final product that the museum may display in their exhibit space while considering the ethical issues around the history of museum collection and display practice. The course will explore ongoing debates on the ethics of display while learning basic principles of museum display and curation.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS CHIN 202 23600 Chinese V Hechun Ping Tuesdays and Thursdays 6:00-7:50pm Community-Engaged Learning
Course Description
This course offers students a unique opportunity for collaboration and engagement through language exchange and mutual learning with Chinese-speaking seniors at the Philadelphia Senior Center. Through virtual conversations and a field trip, students will utilize Chinese language to provide English for local Chinese-speaking elderly individuals, and gain insights into the lives and cultures of local immigrants. The course aims to enhance cross-cultural language communication skills.

Fall Term 2023-2024

College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
Westphal/Pennoni DSRE T580 001/PROD T380 001/WEST T380 006/HNRS T380 001/BMES T380 001 CRN: 15285/14745/15284/15258/15287 Aging, Design, & Entrepreneurship June He, Catherine Quay, Arun Ramakrishnan, Chuck Sacco Fridays 2:00pm-4:50pm Community-Engaged Learning
Course Description
This course provides interdisciplinary students with the opportunity to collaborate and learn how to design innovative solutions catering to older users. Through field trips to local immigrant communities, guest speakers from diverse backgrounds, and VR simulations in the health research lab, students will focus on developing the skills necessary to generate creative solutions that meet the needs of age-friendly communities, healthcare systems, and universities. The winning team will receive seed funding to pursue commercialization at the Baiada Institute, with space and mentoring support.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS WRIT 15121 Writers Room Experience Lauren Lowe Wednesday 5:00pm-7:50pm Community-Engaged Learning
Course Description
The Writers Room Experience builds community writing skills, with a particular emphasis on active listening, multi-modal storytelling, collaborative text production, and the processing of heterogeneous group experiences through field note-taking and reflective and recursive writing practices. This course is meant to be repeatable, and taken for variable credit (0-3) depending on the time commitment the student contracts for and their available credits.td>
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
Westphal PRFA 100 11319 Community Arts Performance Practicum Val Ifill TBD Community-Engaged Learning
Course Description
Provides practical experience as a participant in a Department of Performing Arts community arts initiative. Includes involvement with off campus activities with community members under faculty supervision and direction.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
Lindy Center for Civic Engagement CIVC T180 TBD Food and Land Security Steve Dolph Fall Break Community-Based Learning
Course Description
In Philadelphia, food insecurity — lacking reliable access to affordable, nutritious food — affects about one in six families. Rooted in structural inequity, land dispossession, and environmental racism, this condition has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic: studies indicate that among children the rate is closer to one in three. Although numerous programs address food and land insecurity at the individual or neighborhood level, few situate cultural preservation as their guiding framework. Fewer still place community agriculture at the center of their practice, and the pathway not just toward security, but sovereignty. In this course, we examine the root causes of food and land insecurity in our city and engage directly with community agriculture projects in Black and Latinx neighborhoods dedicated to fighting it. Along the way, we will make deep and durable connections with each other and with the land that sustains us.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS SPAN 340 15069 After Maria Steve Dolph Monday and Wednesday 10:00am-11:50pm Community Based Global Learning
Course Description
The idea that modern environmental disasters are caused not by "natural" forces but rather by human actions took root after Hurricane Katrina, which permanently displaced tens of thousands of people--mostly poor people of color--from the lower Mississippi delta. After Katrina, public institutions like schools, hospitals, and utilities were haphazardly privatized in a process known as "disaster capitalism." This process was repeated when Hurricane María struck Puerto Rico in 2017, only now the effects were aggravated by the colonial status of an archipelago burdened by massive debt, predatory economic policies, and cynical austerity measures. This course will examine the aftermath of María in Puerto Rico--on the one hand as a byproduct of grotesque climate barbarism, and on the other as a transformative catalyst that has inspired a wave of grassroots political, environmental, and social justice movements, both on the island and in the global diaspora.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
Lindy Center for Civic Engagement CIVC T380 ICA Culture and Community Development Ahaji Schreffler and Shardé Johnson Fall Break Community Based Global Learning
Course Description
Coupled with community-centered learning in Tanzania, this co-curricular course introduces students to the complexities of development and volunteerism – from large institutions and NGOs to small grass roots organizations. Students will explore how development efforts can further marginalize the very communities they intend to serve. We will then examine the value of a community-driven approach that recognizes culture and history as a model for local and global sustainable development.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
Westphal ARCH T380 14688 Policing: Theory and Practice Ulrike Altenmüller-Lewis & Debra Ruben Wednesday 6:00pm-8:50pm Community-Engaged Learning
Course Description
In this interdisciplinary seminar course, students will collaborate with community members and local experts to create a series of Playful Learning interventions in the East Parkside Community of Philadelphia. Design teams will focus on developing Playful Learning initiatives for multiple sites, fostering intergenerational interaction and enriching children’s cognitive and social development in the public spaces they encounter every day. Through assigned readings, lectures, community meetings and design charrettes students will acquire essential skills in community engagement, teamwork, inclusive design and placemaking. Additionally, grant funding has been secured in partnership with Playful Learning Landscapes Action Network, Watchdog and Drexel University, which will lead to the realization of some of the projects. For those interested, students also will have the chance to continue their involvement by participating in construction documentation and implementation activities for academic credit.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
Westphal ARCH T380 15425 Community Engagement & Design Uk Jung Thursday 6:30-9:50pm Community-Engaged Learning
Course Description
This class gives a primer on community engagement and participatory design processes in an active learning environment. We will engage with local community members, leaders, and organizations to inform a real design project to be developed in the Mantua neighborhood. Participatory design and designing with neighborhood stakeholders will be key components of this design course.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
Pennoni Cassandra Hirsch 15205 Prison Reading Project Cassandra Hirsch Monday 2:00-4:50pm Community-Engaged Learning
Course Description
The Prison Reading Project invites you to look closely at mass incarceration, gleaning insights from media we explore and discuss as a class; from speakers who have either been incarcerated and/or work in the criminal justice realm; and from individuals acting as advocates working toward criminal justice reforms. Covering topics such as education behind bars, mental health, youth sentencing and re-entry, women in prison, and the bail system, among myriad other topics, we will learn together. This course will also acquaint you with aspects of yourself as you reflect on what we read, see, watch, and hear. This course can act as a starting place for the conversations you may choose to continue beyond our term together. Classroom discussion, weekly reflective writing, and a final researched reflection on a relevant topic of your choice will make up the course grade.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
COE PENG 501 12090 Peace Engineering Seminar Mira Olson Tuesday 4:00-4:50pm Community-Engaged Learning
Course Description
The Peace Engineering Seminar will introduce students to peacebuilding cases and will help students understand how engineering approaches can be applied to peacebuilding. In each term, two peacebuilding cases will be presented by peacebuilders from federal agencies, multinational organizations, and NGOs. In-class sessions subsequent to the case’s presentation, students: 1) will investigate the case through the literature and discuss the case with members of the peacebuilding community; 2) will explore how techniques learned in the core Peace Engineering classes can be applied to the case; 3) will advocate for engineering and technical approaches that could be applied in similar situations; and 4) will use the case as a springboard for reflective writing about the development of skills and personal growth.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
COE PENG 545 12103 Introduction to Peacebuilding for Engineers Mira Olson TBD Community-Engaged Learning
Course Description
Developed in partnership with professional peacebuilders from the PeaceTech Lab and USIP’s Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding in Washington DC, this course introduces engineering students to the concepts and skills practiced in the field of international peacebuilding and conflict transformation. This course provides students with first-hand accounts of peacebuilders describing the challenges and opportunities in their work, short presentations outlining key theories and concepts that guide that work, and opportunities to think about how this knowledge, skills, and attitudes can be applied to real-life peacebuilding dilemmas.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS SCTS T480/T580 15094/15510 Informing Policy with Science Gwen Ottinger Tuesday and Thursday 4:00-5:20pm Side-By-Side
Course Description
Too often elected officials appear to ignore or distrust scientific knowledge when making public policy. What can people who care about facts do to make sure that policy makers use the best available knowledge to inform their decisions? This course will examine social science research on why science is--and isn’t--taken up in public policy. Based on these findings, students will generate a list of Dos and Don’ts for experts who want to influence policy, and will identify concrete steps they can take to increase the impact of their expertise.

Spring Term 2022-2023 

College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS/Westphal URBS-640/GST T380/ARCH T480 34891; 35709; 35076 Sanctuary Cities Steve Dolph Monday 6:00pm-8:50pm Community-Based Learning
Course Description
Historically associated with privately held enclosures within urban space (churches, homes, gardens), “sanctuary” is increasingly understood as a public practice that shapes public policy. This course explores the role of so-called “sanctuary cities,” municipalities that limit their collaboration with (and sometimes openly defy) state and federal agencies; within the bitter struggle to reform the US immigration system. We examine the historical records, interviews, legal statutes, executive orders, artistic projects, and literature that have shaped this contested issue, with particular focus on how cities at once activate and restrict the revolutionary potential of sanctuary.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
Westphal URBS 34052 Into to the Urban Ecosystem Scott Quitel Wednesday 6:00pm-8:50pm Community-Based Learning
Course Description
An ecosystem is a realm of interplay between and among living organisms and nonliving elements, living systems and nonliving systems, and, in places like Philadelphia, habitat fragments and built infrastructure. The City itself may be viewed as a large, complex, dynamic Urban Ecosystem, composed of various smaller ecosystems, all interconnected. When an event or occurrence takes place in one ecosystem, it has a direct and domino-like impact within that system; and it also has impacts, direct and indirect, upon other ecosystems. The focus in this class is on the heterogeneous landscapes, and their associated ecosystems, that comprise Philadelphia. Particular focus will be directed upon climate as a dynamic array of systems and patterns and the impact of changing climate upon our urban environment. A student of or in the City- be they an urban strategist, an architect, an engineer, an artist - needs a foundation in knowing how ecosystems operate and behave to excel in their chosen field of study. This field-based course lays that foundation.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
Pennoni HNRS 303 31368 A People’s History of American Material Culture Joseph Larnderd Wednesday 6:00-8:50pm Side by Side Course
Course Description
Are you interested in taking a class alongside community members about the power of everyday material culture to effect social change? How have objects like furniture, furnishings, and adornments expressed and stirred the social imagination? What overlooked lived experiences might our study of such objects make more present or more vivid? This is “A People’s History of American Material Culture.”
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS WGST T180 34673 Introduction to Queer and Trans Studies Jennifer Yusin Tuesday and Thursday 11:00pm-12:20pm Community-Based Learning
Course Description
This is a community-based learning course that introduces the interdisciplinary fields of queer and transgender studies. Together, we will explore the ongoing developments of concepts of 'queer' and 'transgender' as they are situated across social, cultural, historical, and political contexts. Through a combination of community engagement and applications of classroom learning, we will learn how gender and sexuality are configured and intersecting with class, race, nationality, religion, ability, and other zones of experience. Along the way, we will also engage with key issues in queer and transgender studies by focusing on how the practical, everyday experiences of a diversity of positionalities can help us address urgent social issues
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS WGST T280 34674 How to Change the World: Putting Activism Theory Into Practice Allison Berk Wednesday 6:00pm-8:50pm Community Based Learning
Course Description
Given the current socio-political environment in the United States and globally, an understanding of successful social movements, basic social impact skills, and developing an understanding of and commitment to addressing social issues has become, and will continue to be, essential to being able to effectively communicate the needs, accomplishments, challenges, and expectations of both individuals and communities. This course acknowledges that most, if not all mainstream social movements, have historically included problematic rhetoric including frameworks and concepts that are ableist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, ageist and transphobic. Given that, we will explore a wide breadth of social movements from a critical feminist theoretical lens and actions, both contemporary and historical, that are intersectional and inclusive in nature and seek to understand what contributes to their "success" or "failure" in order to better prepare students to advocate for themselves and their communities when they notice social injustice. As a community-based learning course, we will take advantage of the opportunity to combine classroom learning with community engagement and reflection to think critically and deeply about pressing social issues and real-world applications of academic learning.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
Westphal DANC 102 32002 Yoga Jennifer Morley Tuesday 6:30pm-9:20pm Community Based Learning
Course Description
The physical and intellectual study of the ancient practice of yoga. Includes both physical practice and readings related to the discipline, as well as a survey of a variety of forms of the practice.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS CJS 403-130 34690 Policing: Theory and Practice Cyndi Rickards Monday & Wednesday 2:00-3:50pm Community-Based Learning
Course Description
This is course examines contemporary issues in policing, representing a unique collaboration between the Department of Criminology and Justice Studies and the Drexel University Police Department. The course offers both a classroom component that grounds students in the academics of policing, as well as a Citizen Police Academy experience to teach certain aspects of policing through practice. Each week, students will study a policing topic in class and then participate in a simulated police activity hosted by Drexel police officers. These simulated activities include car stops, shoot-don't-shoot scenarios, responding to mass shooting events, and drug seizures. Ultimately, this course hopes to integrate two aspects of American policing that are typically separated: How we teach policing, and how we do policing.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS BIO 200 31462 Connections in Biology Scott Quitel Tuesday 2:00-4:50pm Community-Based Learning
Course Description
Connections in Biology is an open enrollment course which will give students the opportunity to make exactly that: connections. Building upon a new theme in biology each week, students will connect that material to their current Philadelphia community as well as to their future professional and personal pursuits. The course is designed on the Community Based Learning platform (CBL) and is scheduled to meet twice a week: one meeting will be a formal lecture on campus and one meeting will be at a partnered middle school with the instructor and Drexel students leading an 9 week after school science club. Students will gain volunteer hours, get an introduction to civic engagement, benefit from community based learning practices and connect their Drexel course material to the bigger picture in their lives.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS WRIT 280 34925 Writers Room Lab Credit Valerie Fox Thursday 6:00-6:50pm Community-Based Learning
Course Description
The Writers Room LAB Credit is a single-credit laboratory meant to be attached to courses with projects engaging in civic action. The LAB credit is meant to allow motivated and self-directed students to invest more time in integrating the knowledge from an academic class with community work participated in beyond the classroom setting (and as aspects of the course). The student will engage in reflective writing at the beginning and end of the course that will frame and deepen the synthesis of academic knowledge and experiential action taken in the community.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS WRIT 290 3496 Writers Room Experience Lauren Lowe Wednesday 5:00-7:50pm Community-Based Learning
Course Description
The Writers Room Experience builds community writing skills, with a particular emphasis on active listening, multi-modal storytelling, collaborative text production, and the processing of heterogeneous group experiences through field note-taking and reflective and recursive writing practices.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS CJS 260 34684 Justice in Our Community Cyndi Rickards Monday 10:00-11:50am Community-Based Learning
Course Description
This course is a seminar style community-based learning course that will begin with an introduction to justice in urban communities and examine problems unique to cities. The course format will include lectures and on-site work with our community partners at UConnect. The synthesis of scholarship and community classroom experience will provide a holistic lens in which to explore issues in our urban community. Topics include urban economies, access to education and health care, digital divides and crime. Students who take this course will also register for one recitation section of CJS 260.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS CJS 261 31224 Prison, Society and You Cyndi Rickards Thursday 1:00-3:50pm Community-Based Learning
Course Description
This course utilizes the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program to explore the relationship between individuals and the prison system. The Inside-¬Out Exchange Program is an evolving set of projects that creates opportunities for dialogue between those on the outside and those on the inside of the nation’s correctional facilities. The program demonstrates the potential for dynamic collaborations between institutions of higher education and correctional institutions. Most importantly, through this unique exchange, Inside-Out, this course seeks to deepen the conversation and transform ways of thinking about crime and justice.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
CoAS SPAN 430 34560 Food, Language and Migration Maria de la luz Matus-Mendoza Tuesday and Thursday 4:00-5:50pm Community-Based Learning
Course Description
What do people take when they migrate? Language, food, and their cooking practices. What do they maintain and why? This course will explore how their language, food, and cooking practices interact in the new places where migrants settle. Through literature, pop culture, academic research, films, documentaries, and newscasts, students examine how migrant communities develop their culinary traditions, why certain food practices become relevant in their sense of community, the role that food and cooking practices play in their new residence and how this is displayed in public spaces. Emphasis is given to gendered practices in cooking in the Spanish speaking world. Taught in Spanish.
College Course # CRN Course Title Instructor Date/Time Location
Westphal PRFA 430 31633 Community Arts Performance Practicum Val Ifill TBD Community-Based Learning
Course Description
Provides practical experience as a participant in a Department of Performing Arts community arts initiative. Includes involvement with off campus activities with community members under faculty supervision and direction.