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Engaged Scholarship: Starting an Experience for your Class

This guide provides educators and students a curated list of resources to promote and support engaged scholarship experiences for students at Penn State campuses.

Why this Guide?

This guide, created by the Community of Practice for Teaching Engaged Scholarship, provides educators and students a curated list of resources to promote and support engaged scholarship experiences of students at Penn State campuses. This guide defines engaged scholarship as any research a group of students is doing with and for a community to make a sustainable impact on the ground and to enhance their learning experiences at Penn State.

Users of this guide will be able to:

  • Get started with an engaged scholarship experience in their course.
  • Connect with Penn State units, faculty, and staff to seek support and make engagement scholarship a reality in their classroom.
  • Include engaged scholarship experiences in their syllabus by utilizing the resources provided in this guide.
  • Disseminate the engaged scholarship experience and results.
  • Utilize support opportunities to enhance the engaged scholarship experience.

Disclaimer: this guide is a starting point and one source of inspiration for teaching engaged scholarship and not the only resource. Readers are encouraged to seek out additional resources and people from their college/department.

Getting Started

Step 1: Initiate connections with a community organization and Penn State faculty and staff who might be interested in collaborating on an engaged scholarship project in your course. See the list of partners to the left.

Step 2: Design an engaged scholarship project that is right for the course. The following questions can be considered:

  • How can the project be an empowering experience for students and educators?
  • What are the expected learning outcomes and appropriate pedagogies?
  • How will the project help build relationships between the university, communities, and industry sectors?
  • Who are the community partners? Think of elected officials, government officials, community groups, and residents.
  • What is the expected sustainable impact on the ground?
  • How does the course advance the mission of Penn State as an R1 and public university?

See the resources section to design the specifics of your project.

Step 3: Plan the dissemination of the results in the community, Penn State, and beyond. See the dissemination section to the left.

Step 4: Seek academic and administrative support opportunities for your project. See the support section to the left.