CAMPUS PROFILE

(Lexington, virginia)

Washington & Lee’s Community-Engaged Learning Initiative work this year, spearheaded by Marisa Charley, Shepherd Program Associate Director, Bonner Program Director, and Instructor of Poverty Studies, included four in-person gatherings as a cohort, and an additional 8 individual meetings between grant leadership and individual faculty and/or community partners. These gatherings included sharing of past experiences, discussion of strategies for mitigating the impact of institutional barriers to success of CE coursework, and taking a critical lens to the work of developing more innovative community-engaged opportunities for learning in the Poverty Studies track.

The four courses planned to teach, housed in Educational Studies, English, Environmental Studies, and Poverty Studies, have all been largely developed and reviewed as a result of the Bonner CEL work this year.

Title of Course: Middle/Secondary Content Area Reading and Writing
Community Partner: Youth Achieving Success (Maury River Middle School's 21st Century Community Learning Center)
CE Themes: education gap, college readiness

Title of Course: Food and the Environment
Community partner: Rockbridge Historical Society
CE Themes: understanding, articulating, and disseminating valuable anthropological information on the historical development of food systems; issues of food justice

Title of Course: Intro to Fiction Writing
Community Partner: Augusta Correctional Center
CE Themes: Inside-Out model with incarcerated and matriculated students co-learning, ethical exploration of the use of narratives

Title of Course: Poverty, Justice, and Love
Community Partner: Augusta Correctional Center; Live Healthy Rockbridge
CE Themes: Inside-Out model with incarcerated and matriculated students co-learning; development of modified “inside-out model” focusing on co-learning with a different population as defined by Live Healthy Rockbridge Coalition

The two community partners, Rockbridge Historical Society and Live Healthy Rockbridge, both participated fully in many of the discussions, and collectively feel the impact of more deeply understanding each others needs and desires for student learning and community impact. Student participants contributed to this work by bringing structured reflective prompts at the conclusion of each meeting, and by sharing their own experiences as learnings in community-engaged courses. W&L believes that, once these courses are able to be taught, they will have successfully broadened the number of community-engaged courses in the Poverty Studies Minor, but also deepened the partnerships to create more meaningful impact on campus and off.