CU Service Learning

PROJECTS

Faculty may encourage students to engage in a wide array of projects based on both the faculty’s goal and the student’s own interests.

Some examples of projects from the 2004 grant process include:

- Students exploring how laws might marginalize less powerful groups and individuals.

- Working with affordable housing programs students would prepare educational programs on contract issues.

- Create educational programs to provide support for affordable housing programs in the local community.

- Studying and discussion of issues of AIDS/HIV, refugees and hunger and conservation in Africa. Then students are introduced to community partners in the local community working directly in these areas.

- A community expresses a need for wastewater treatment, drinking water treatment, solid waste, recycling, hazardous chemicals, etc. that can be tackled by students. During the process, students learn how to integrate financial, social, political, regulatory and technical issues.

- CU Biology students work toward training beginning science students to engage in scientific process and to modernize high school and 2-year college biology curricula.

- Exploring social relations and power and how understanding of these dynamics provide the foundation for making social change a reality.

- Organization of out-of-class group service projects, research service oriented clubs and organizations on the Boulder campus and host guest speakers from service partners.

- Promoting sustainable development with a focus in East and Southern Africa, South and Central America, and South and Southeast Asia. This is accomplished through sponsoring workshops, fostering a diverse community of peers, building an international network of development professionals, and providing forums for students to present research, discuss issues and share experiences.

- Collaboration between art, art history and engineering students to produce artwork that addresses ecological and environmental issues by researching current issues facing citizens of Colorado through interviews with community partners.

INVST Community Leadership Program students, Jennifer Fox, Claire Williams and Gavriel Weiner (photograph from right to left) organized Operation Illuminate, serving MESA (Moving to End Sexual Assault)

As Jennifer recalls in her reflection piece, the event was very powerful:
A month-long service-learning trip with the INVST Community Leadership Program… I chose to work with a collective of INVST students who were inspired by a shared vision of creating a project that would serve the non-profit organization MESA (Moving to End Sexual Assault) by raising awareness about sexual assault through visual and performance arts. I started a student group called Operation Illuminate so that our efforts could be continued in the future through the University. After the program, one respondent said that, “This was the most profound and challenging program I have ever seen. It was an incredibly powerful message of the damage done by sexual assault but also a tremendous statement of power to heal.”
Beyond the effects this project has had for the artists and audience, it had fundamentally altered the way I view the world and world issues. I have gained irreplaceable life experience in learning what it takes to coordinate and organize an event like this one…I am amazed at how much I have learned.