Community-Based Learning

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Community-Based Learning

Community-Based Learning

Learning in and with our communities

If you can’t wait to start making a difference, you’ve come to the right place. Community-Based Learning (CBL) pairs Mount Holyoke students, faculty and staff with local leaders in South Hadley and beyond to collaborate on internships, research and service projects that have a direct, positive impact in our communities. You’ll also be able to learn from on-the-ground practitioners and understand how to apply the ideas, theories and models you learn in class. A CBL experience breaks down the barrier between the classroom and the real world, enhancing your understanding of current social issues both locally and nationally, and helping you grow the leadership, organizing and advocacy skills that are vital to change making at all levels. And for our community partners, CBL fosters sustainable, mutually beneficial relationships that support local organizations and help them thrive.

The core components of the CBL program include student employment opportunities, tutoring and mentoring opportunities and community partnerships.

Upcoming CBL events

Student employment opportunities

CBL employs students in a variety of capacities. CBL student employment opportunities are listed each spring and as needed on .

Community Fellows work on community organizing, education, college access, youth development, and environmental, social and economic justice projects. Duties and projects are determined by the organization and student in collaboration. Participating community-based organizations work in a wide variety of fields. Fellows are trained via CBL program curriculum, ongoing education opportunities, and academic coursework, which helps them develop skills and strategies for use in non-profits and education.

Course Mentors operate within a specific CBL course, assisting course instructors in carrying out CBL class components. Responsibilities generally include: providing logistical support to the partnership; establishing relationships with local organizations; placing and orienting students at sites. Mentors may be asked to monitor CBL sites in the field and to attend class to provide in-classroom support such as leading discussions. Mentors are typically recruited by faculty from among students who have taken CBL courses or worked with them previously. Mentors are trained, supported, and paid by the CBL Program.

Administrative Fellows support the CBL Program as student staff members. Administrative Fellows support Community Fellows' projects, plan events and workshops, advance program communications and outreach, and facilitate transportation solutions. Administrative Fellows are highly organized, able to work independently and efficiently, work well with others, and represent the CBL Program on and off campus.

Federal work-study recipients can tutor grades K-9 in the nearby community through America Reads/America Counts. They also may be able to conduct their work-study off campus in nonprofit or public service organizations which are prepared to cost-share the student's hourly wage. The employer and student should be in contact with the Weissman Center to make such arrangements.

Mount Holyoke students may work with Community-Based Learning to advance special project initiatives, develop public-partnership events, and pursue advanced learning or service projects.

Examples of such work might include:

hosting social justice-oriented workshops
hosting an issue-oriented event
advanced study of a community-based research project
attending a training or conference relevant to your project or organization's mission
designing a community engagement or social justice independent study project

The Community Based Learning team is available to advise on projects, from proposals to execution, and can arrange financial support or academic supervision for such work.

CBL tutoring and mentoring

Each semester, �� places many students as tutors/mentors in educational partnerships throughout the Pioneer Valley, Our tutors/mentors hope to make positive impacts on student academic and social outcomes, and improve access to higher education through positive role modeling, mentoring, and learning support.

What opportunities are available for tutors/mentors?

�� students can participate as a tutor/mentor in two ways:

Through a CBL Course Placement: many courses enable students to serve as tutors as part of course credit.

As a Work-Study Job (America Reads/America Counts): If you are a U.S. citizen and receive a federal work-study award as part of your financial aid package at Mount Holyoke, you are eligible to work as a tutor off-campus in the Homework House program in Holyoke. Please visit JobX to apply to become a HH tutor.

Want to get started as a CBL tutor/mentor?

To become a tutor/mentor, please go to JobX to find open tutor/mentor positions. If you have any questions, email us at cbl@mtholyoke.edu.

CBL community partnerships

CBL students, faculty, and staff work in many communities and with many different types of community agencies and organizations. There is no unified “community voice” guiding us to successful, reciprocal, sustainable partnership. But there are many community organization staff and leaders with extensive experience working with area colleges, students, faculty with much to share with us about what works and what does not, and why.

For the last decade or more, Holyoke community leaders, social and human service agency staff, residents, educators and those of us who come from area college campuses have met together to consider ways to ensure that campus-community partnerships are practiced to the highest ethical and practical standards. The “Campus-Community Partnership Project” yielded the Holyoke Campus Community Compact. Mount Holyoke’s CBL Program is a signatory to that Compact, and as such, we seek to abide by its principles.

Principles of Practice guide Mount Holyoke faculty and students toward sustainable, ethical practices that value rigorous and meaningful academic learning as an essential outcome of campus-community partnerships.

Students are both the key resource �� brings to campus-community collaborations, and the central beneficiaries of such partnership even in the best circumstances when they are also contributing to a community need. Through CBL, students experience extraordinary growth in their understanding of current social issues, diversity, leadership, social action and change, and perhaps most importantly – themselves. Students are encouraged to speak with CBL program staff at any stage of their �� career about their interests and ambitions as activists, community citizens, potential non-profit sector and education job seekers, change agents, and leaders.

Faculty members and College departments/programs are invited to develop CBL courses, curricula, and community-based research (CBR) projects for faculty and student scholarship. The director offers practical support through CBL program resources, as well as substantive guidance and an extensive library of materials including: sample syllabi, assessment and evaluation tools, reflection and discussion exercises, models of good practice, and curricular development guides.

Community Based Organizations are invited to propose CBL projects suitable for students and faculty in courses, independent learning, and research and service, for ongoing or one-time partnerships by contacting Community Based Learning.

Happening at Mount Holyoke

Community-Based Learning in the news

A group of people holding their hands together in a circle

New Community-Based Learning director joins ��

Maria Cartagena has joined the Weissman Center for Leadership at �� as the new director of Community-Based Learning (CBL).

David Hernández, associate professor of Latino/a studies, says “These are all great ways for students to contribute, but also learn about the local community, a complex community with its own dynamics.”

Volunteers help students at Homework House

�� undergraduates volunteer at Homework House, tutoring elementary school students in the city of Holyoke.

Mount Holyoke’s newest students prepare to serve lunch at the Bag the Community food-pantry event.

Tackling food insecurity one bag at a time

6,500 bags. An 18-wheeler and several vans filled with donated food. Spring admits begin their Mount Holyoke career with community service.

Public Service

More CBL News

CBL staff

Department head(s)

Maria Cartagena

Director of Community-Based Learning

Department and affiliated faculty

David Hernández

Associate Professor of Latina/o Studies and Critical Race and Political Economy
Faculty Director of Community Engagement
Co-chair of Critical Race and Political Economy

Staff

Elisha Bonilla

CBL Program Coordinator for the Weissman Center for Leadership

Contact us

Community-Based Learning

Community-Based Learning links students with communities through courses, independent studies, internships, and research and service projects that combine learning and analysis with action and social change.

Elisha Bonilla

CBL Program Coordinator for the Weissman Center for Leadership

ebonilla@mtholyoke.edu

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