Current Community-Engaged Learning Courses
Community-engaged learning courses are those that incorporate experiential education that simultaneously and equitably promote student learning and address community needs. This means that community-engaged learning courses work with community partners and communities beyond the campus. In those experiences and interactions, students learn in ways that enrich the course content, and seek to benefit the public good during and beyond the class.
The following list contains upcoming and current CEL courses in which students may enroll this academic year. Please note that this list is purely informational. Students must enroll in courses through the college-wide preregistration and add/drop processes, like any other course.
If you are interested in exploring a wider course catalog of those CEL courses that have been offered in recent years and may be offered again, please see our CEL Course Catalog.
2023-2024 CEL Courses
We are proud to share that Colorado College offered 45 community-engaged learning courses in the 2023-2024 academic year. Below, you'll find a brief summary of how these courses incorporated experiences, projects, and assignments that promote student learning and community impact. (Note that some of these courses were offered multiple times.)
| AN220 | Ingram, Scott | Doing Archaeology | Students documented historic homesteads for the Chico Basin Ranch and other properties with material traces of past human action on a landscape, learning what archaeology is and how it is practiced in action. The community partner gained understanding of the lives of past people living on the landscape they care for, and share this history with their visitors. | ||
| AN270 | Hautzinger, Sarah J. | Anthropocene | Students participate in varied community experiences, learning how community arts support environmental resilience from nonprofit Concrete Couch, participating in a “sustainability bike tour,” conducting a sustainable development goal analysis, and engaging in a Talanoa Dialogue (storytelling/conflict resolution process). | ||
| AN326 | Hautzinger, Sarah | Religion and Ritual | Students learn and practice alongside diverse spiritual communities, particularly members of the Crestone Spiritual Alliance. Students reciprocate by giving a presentation back to the CSA. | ||
| AN380 | Hautzinger, Sarah J. | Community-Based Field Course: COP 28 - Dubai, UAE | Students participated in the United Nations’ climate summit, in dozens of sessions working with multiple organizations, and producing publicly published blogs and a journal of essays. | ||
| AS401 | Leonard, Kate | Special Studio Problems: Graphics Research Lab | |||
| BU205 | Diaz Ferraro, Celeste | Principles of Financial Accounting | Junior Achievement (JA) piloted a curriculum with CC students, leading a simulation on personal finance. Students shared their feedback on the simulation, which JA used to adapt the curriculum from a high school to a college audience. | ||
| BU310 | Miller-Stevens, Katrina - Kat | Society, Business, and Economics | The Society, Business, Economics course (BU310) worked with the Better Business Bureau of Southern Colorado to learn about and research social impact companies in seven states across the U.S. Companies were identified and entered into a database that will be used by BBB4GOOD. | ||
| CC105 | Gorensek-Benitez, Annelise | Critical Inquiry Seminar: Dyeing to Learn Chemistry | Students designed and tested a natural dye experiment based on the resources and needs of Flying Pig Farm and the Sustainable Educational Experience (SEE). Students learned how to translate technical knowledge for a general audience by sharing the protocols and results with community partners. | ||
| CC106 | Taber, Mike | Critical Inquiry Seminar:Ecology, Resistance, and Liberation | Students engage with and teach in schools in rural communities. | ||
| EC102 | Yang, Guanyi | Principles of Macroeconomics | Students presented on local economic conditions to the nonprofit Community Works and the Economic Development Department of the City of Colorado Springs. | ||
| EC285 | Yang, Guanyi | Intermediate Topics in Macroeconomics: Economics of Inequality | CC students provide peer relationships and mentoring to students in Harrison high school (D2) for three weeks and Otero Elementary for one day. | ||
| EC385 | Yang, Guanyi | Advanced Topics in Macroeconomics: Economics of Education Policy | Students worked with local schools, conducting an observational study on Special Education programs, examining various local policies and their impacts. They then shared findings with the local school district. | ||
| ED101 | Brunton, Natalia; Coomer, Nickie; Valtierra, Tina | Introduction to K-12 Classroom Culture | Students complete at least 30 hours of practicum experiences in local schools, addressing the needs of the school and emphasizing individualized help to K-12 students. Practicum experiences converge with course content to examine the influence of classroom culture on student learning. | ||
| ED120 | Arias, Juan Miguel | Practicum in Environmental Education | Students complete at least 60 hours of indoor and outdoor practicum experiences in cooperation with Catamount Center staff and local school personnel. Responsibilities include assisting with outdoor teaching at the Catamount Mountain Campus, and visiting and learning from other experienced environmental educators at their sites. | ||
| ED250 | Arias, Juan Miguel; Cavin, Drew | Topics in Education: Outdoor Education and Leadership | Small groups of students worked with Outdoor Education & Recreation organizations (PPORA, UpaDowna, Generation Wild) to address contemporary, place-based questions and issues. The goal was for students understand organizational needs and engage in a capacity-building project to prepare them for the next steps in their work. | ||
| ED310 | Taber, Mike | Integrative STEM Education: Promoting Inclusion, Equity, and Social Transformation | Students spend approximately 25-30 hours in local school classrooms or in related educational settings. In these settings, students observe and volunteer to support teachers while they are there, to include the possibility of teaching lessons to K-12 students. | ||
| ED380 | Stoller, Aaron | Curriculum Theories | Students took what they learned and applied it to supporting the development of a real curriculum - “Diversity University II,” a multi-day workshop offered through local nonprofit Educating Children of Color (ECOC). | ||
| ED466 | Coomer, Nickie | Data Driven Instruction for Diverse Learners in the 21st Century | Students spend approximately 20 hours per week in local schools during the summer, then 10 hours per week with cooperating teachers during the academic year. | ||
| ED477 | Valtierra, Tina | Culturally Sustaining Teaching and Disciplinary Literary Methods | Students engage in 20 practicum hours in a local classroom placement applying course content. This includes getting to know student biographies, and designing and teaching a lesson plan that uses culturally sustaining practices. | ||
| ED478 | Valtierra, Tina | Advanced Methods: Inclusive Pedagogies in Literacy, Curriculum and Instruction | Students engage in 70 practicum hours in a local classroom placement applying course content. This includes weekly lesson planning, learning about and responding to diverse student needs. | ||
| ED495 | Arias, Juan-Miguel | Internship in Education | This internship is an opportunity for education students to deeply explore a subfield of education by working full time at a site for a block. Students will translate theory to practice by applying their knowledge and skills in a professional setting where they will deepen their examination of educational policies and/or practices under the guidance of a site supervisor. | ||
| ED553 | Taber, Mike | Action Research Methods for MAT Candidates | Students spend approximately 20 hours per week in local schools during the summer, then 10 hours per week with cooperating teachers during the academic year. | ||
| EV321 | Perramond, Eric | Environmental Management | Students learn about environmental management through engaging with public lands, conservation, and environmental agencies at the local, regional, and national scale. | ||
| EV343 | Gabrielsen, Charlotte | Landscape Ecology | Students cultivate a facility with landscape ecology theory and skills, and are empowered to apply these skills to address real-life conservation and management challenges identified by stakeholders. This class is currently partnered with Palmer Land Conservancy. | ||
| EV365 | Drossman, Howard | Developing Environmental and Sustainability Education Curriculum | Part of the TREE semester, this course teaches methods of environmental and outdoor education. In a practicum experience, students teach high school and 5th grade students for about 80 hours, and write their own curriculum for 10 hours of high school and 20 hours of the 5th grade curriculum. | ||
| EV421.1 | McKendry, Corina | Environmental Synthesis | Student engage in 20 hours of community service per semester, putting their environmental knowledge into action and learning from community groups that are doing environmental work on the ground. Along the way, students reflect on their volunteer work and the way the organization approaches environmental change. | ||
| EV421.2 | McKendry, Corina | Environmental Synthesis | Student engage in 20 hours of community service per semester, putting their environmental knowledge into action and learning from community groups that are doing environmental work on the ground. Along the way, students reflect on their volunteer work and the way the organization approaches environmental change. | ||
| FG236 | Kumar, Rushaan | LGBTQ Social Movements in the U.S. | Students contribute to the Colorado Springs LGBTQ+ Oral History Project, with groups of students interviewing LGBTQ+ residents and community members in the Springs. | ||
| GS118 | Radke, Jordan | Topics in Community Engagement: Introduction to Community Engagement Practicum- Bonner Fellows | In this practicum experience, first year Bonner Fellows explore community opportunities through "mini-internships" to discern what issues they are passionate about and how they might engage in local changemaking in that issue. By the end of the semester, Bonner Fellows identify a local nonprofit partner they will intern with the following fall (and, potentially, through graduation). | ||
| GS222 | Rios, Nancy | Special Topics: CC Mobile Arts Community Activism | Students actively participate in operations of CC Mobile Arts (CCMA), while interrogating and reflecting on its theoretical foundations and commitment to use art in expanding community and social change. Adjunct students support the development of the project and create a culminating community event. | ||
| GY320 | Schanz, Sarah | Landscape Processes and Evolution | Class worked with Fountain Creek Watershed District and Matrix Design Group to understand their needs, then used field work and GIS analysis to update erosion patterns along Fountain Creek from Fountain to Pueblo. We collated the data and interpretations in publically-shared StoryMaps and gave presentations to the Watershed District's Citizen Advisory Group, focusing on the stability of previous restoration projects through the 2023 floods and potential future project sites. | ||
| GY400 | Fricke, Henry | Collaborative Research Seminar | Students attended the national meeting of the American Geophysical Union, noting best practices and research findings to address questions of the Fountain Creek Watershed. The goal of the exchange was to bridge the world of academic research with applied work in those areas. | ||
| JA201 | Onishi, Hiromi | Intermediate Japanese I | CC students engaged elementary children in lessons on introductory words and elements of Japanese culture. | ||
| MA117 | Sancier-Barbosa, Flavia | Elementary Probability and Statistics | This course engaged students in applied research analysis with real-world data and questions of interest to the City of Colorado Springs (Parks, Rec, & Cultural Services). In doing so, students learned statistical methods. | ||
| MU227 | Carrizo, Liliana | Topics in Southwest Studies: Musical Tapestries of the American Southwest | This is a field trip course rooted in community-based, musical-ethnographic study – one that aims to immerse students in the musical-cultural fabric of New Mexico through hands-on ethnographic inquiry and learning. During time in the field, students participate in workshops led by local New Mexican artisans. Upon return, students complete creative projects that reflect on their ethnographic experiences, then gift these projects back to the artists and musicians they encountered. | ||
| MU228 | Aharony, Iddo | Topics in Music: Engaged Music Lab | Co-taught with musical duo The Reminders, students collaboratively created musical projects in teams of students with people served by different community partners, as well as a performance with CC Mobile Arts at America the Beautiful park. | ||
| PS230 | Popovic, Srda; Djinovic, Slobodan | Waging Nonviolent Conflict | Students investigate social movement theory, then envision, organize and strategically guide a nonviolent social movement by workshopping the mission, tactics, and/or vision of local nonprofits and campaigns. This course is co-taught by experienced pro-democracy activists. | ||
| PY299 | Driscoll, Lori | Neuroscience | During this course, students prepare and teach lessons on the brain to local elementary school students using real animal and human brains kept by the department. Outreach continues through the Neuroscience club, occasionally reaching middle and high school students as well. | ||
| SO328 | Rojo, Florencia | Community Based Research | Students apply sociological research methods to contribute to an ongoing research partnership with Food to Power (FTP), a community-based food justice nonprofit. The research aligns with FTP's overarching goal of comprehending the local food system to foster collaborative improvements. | ||
| SO411 | Murphy-Geiss, Gail | Community Based Praxis | Taught as an independent study each year during half block, with the option to continue as a spring adjunct (depending on the complexity of the project). Teams of students engage in community-based research to put sociology into practice for a community, organization, or movement. | ||
Questions about community-engaged learning courses? Email jradke@coloradocollege.edu.
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Last updated: 05/17/2024