How can Faculty Get Involved in Community Engagement

The University of South Alabama fully supports the volunteer efforts of its faculty and staff, offering paid time off to pursue volunteer involvement. Use this link to learn more about the Employee Community Volunteer Program.

The National Service Learning Clearing House defines Service Learning as “a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility and strengthen communities.”

The Office of Community Engagement is available to support faculty and departments as they work to integrate Community Engagement and Service Learning into their course offerings. Please feel free to contact our office to schedule an appointment: communityengagement@southalabama.edu or (251) 460-6116.

ONLINE RESOURCES

Campus Compact Toolkit Modules: Designing & Delivering a Service-Learning Course by Dr. Matt Roy (Assistant Provost & Director of the Leduc Center for Civic Engagement, UMASS Dartmouth) and Dr. Dwight Giles (Professor, College of Education and Human Development and Senior Associate with the New England Resource Center for Higher Education)

The following conferences occur annually and offer opportunities for presentation of original scholarship along with professional development around Community Engagement and Service Learning.  Please follow the links below to identify conference specific calls for proposals.

• Annual Conference of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU)
• The Engagement Scholarship Consortium Annual Conference
• Imagining America National Conference
• The Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching 
• International Association for Research on Service-Leaning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE)
• National Service-Learning Conference

The following is a list of peer reviewed journals that offer faculty, staff, community partners and students the opportunity to submit work for publication: 

• Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement
• Journal of Community Engagement and Higher Education
• The International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community
• Journal of Community Engagement & Scholarship
• Public: A Journal of Imagining America
• Progress in Community Health Partnerships

The federal government posts grant opportunities through grants.gov which often require community engagement as a component of the calls for proposal. In addition, the following entities provide regular opportunities to apply for funding to support community engaged scholarly work and research:

National Foundations:

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

The Wallace Foundation

The WK Kellogg Foundation

Local and Regional Funders:

The Alabama Power Foundation

The Community Foundation of South Alabama

The David Mathews Center for Civic Life

The National Academy of Science Engineering Medicine

The Office of Community Engagement offers training for individuals and groups who are interested in learning about South Serves and how it can help you become a more committed neighbor.

• Learn how you can become a fan of “Agencies” so that you won't miss posted “Needs”, or volunteer opportunities
• Sign your student organization/office/department up to be an "Agency" so that you can post “Needs”
• Learn how to organize “User Groups” so that you can track the hours of your students or departmental team members
• If you facilitate Service Learning classes, learn how to organize your class "User Group", assign “Needs”, and “Track Hours” of service
• Find out how to send emails to the members of your organization/team to tell them about “Needs”
• Become an expert in tracking volunteer hours for yourself or your group

If you're interested in training as an individual who wants to volunteer, check out our online tutorials. If you're a group/team/organization leader or a facilitator of a class, please complete this Google Form for the Office of Community Engagement. We will be in touch with you soon to schedule your training.