Community engagement doesn't just happen outside of class. Students can also take advantage of opportunities to learn about social issues and engage with the community through their academic experiences. The Lindy Center for Civic Engagement supports and encourages this by sharing our expertise in Community-Based and Community-Engaged Learning (CB/EL) and our efforts to incorporate this model into courses and other academic experiences across campus.

CB/EL pedagogy combines classroom learning with engagement opportunities, group dialogue, and guided introspection to make participants more informed, more proximate, and more reflective about pressing issues that shape society. CB/EL facilitates opportunities to further relationships between students, faculty and local/global community partners to pursue a public good and to—whether onsite or online—strengthen their collective capacity to address real problems that will generate a more just world in their careers and lives.

Community-engaged courses and initiatives are those where:

• Student learning takes place in some form beyond the traditional classroom, whether it be through dialogue with guest participants, case studies relevant to community issues, or other forms of experiential or applied learning
• Students critically reflect on their individual and shared experiences to engage with course topics
• Students create a learning community within and beyond the classroom based on mutual trust, co-creation of knowledge, and a sense of collective ownership
• Students analyze issues of justice and conditions of critical concern to local and global communities 

Community-engaged learning creates spaces where students can experience needed connection to one another and to their communities as they participate in meaningful civic activity regardless of their social or physical location. 

Learn more about current and past course offerings.

Learn more about CIVC 101, Introduction to Civic Engagement. In 2012, this course became a requirement for all Drexel undergraduate students. In the course, students explore what civic engagement is, how their identities shape their experiences and participation in the world, what social issues and systemic inequalities exist and what it means to make social change, and how they can reflect on and think critically about themselves and society. This course creates a foundation for students, upon which we hope they will build identities as engaged citizens and continue learning and acting.