Community Engaged Learning

Community Engaged Learning (CEL) can be defined as a pedagogy consisting of experiential learning within the context of working-with-community.  The work is controlled by, and performed for, a community organization.  Performing the work enables students to achieve learning objectives related to their academic study. Key to CEL is structured reflection during which students take time to connect their experiences within the community to both professional engineering practice and course learning objectives.  CEL is relevant to sustainability education and is a pedagogy of growing import to engineering educators.  CEL is sometimes called Community Service Learning (CSL).  For more information, please see the International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering, and the American Society for Engineering Education’s Constituent Committee of Community Engagement in Engineering Education, for more information.