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Community-Engaged Courses

Community-engaged and community partnership courses offer innovative and community-based learning opportunities that complement traditional academic courses by extending learning beyond the classroom and partnering with the local community.

These courses allow a re-imagination of how curricular initiatives can support high-impact learning experiences, while simultaneously building equitable partnerships and addressing community projects. Community-engaged or community partnership courses aim to build equitable partnerships with the local community, integrate theory and practice to enhance academic content, honor community members' role as knowledge-holders, and support community-identified projects.

The goals of community engaged and community partnership courses are to:

  • Encourage high-impact learning opportunities among faculty, students, and community organizations
  • Foster equitable community partnerships
  • Bring faculty scholarship and teaching into conversation with community needs and interests
  • Collaborate with community-partners and honor their role as co-educators 
  • Empower students to actualize their desires toward positive reciprocal community impact.

If you have any questions or concerns as you fill out the form, please reach out to the Office of Community Engaged Learning (Elizabeth Cannon at ecannon@vassar.edu and Zoë Markwalter at zmarkwalter@vassar.edu)

Examples of Past Community-Engaged Courses

HISP-379-51 Land Pedagogies
Instructor: Montserrat Madariaga-Caro
Community Partners: Poughkeepsie Farm Project

The current climate crisis urges us to review how we interact with the environment. From an Indigenous perspective, the environment is nothing less than the land and all the diverse life forms, including humans, that sprout from them (the land as "they" and not a lifeless "it"). In this intensive, we critically reflect on our relationship to the land by engaging with land-based pedagogies practiced by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) scholars, farmers, and educators. This intensive includes discussion sessions and hands-on activities co-created, co-facilitated, and in collaboration with the education team of the Poughkeepsie Farm Project. Written and oral assignments are conducted in Spanish.

MATH-301-51 Topics in Adv Math and Stats - Collaborative Consulting for the Community
Instructor: Ming-Wen An
Community Partners: Howland Chamber Music Circle, Poughkeepsie Farm Project, Hudson River Housing

Studying statistics for the sake of knowledge is fascinating, but applying statistics to make a potential impact in your community is even better! In teams of 3-4 students, you will collaborate with non-profit community partners on a project from start to finish. You will build on your statistics foundation, applying skills in communication, teamwork, problem formulation and solving, data wrangling and visualization, and statistical analysis. You will be expected to present regular updates to your partners and the class, work together with your student team and partners, learn new skills and statistical methods as project needs arise, and produce a final “product” (e.g. technical report with key findings or recommendations) that can benefit and be useful to your partners.

Introduction to American Politics - Our Stories (POLI 140)
Instructor: Taneisha Means
Community Partners: Arthur S. May Elementary School's Equity Club

In this intensive, Vassar students continue a partnership with a teacher at Arthur S. May Elementary School. Together, Vassar students, Professor Means, and the Elementary school teacher co-facilitate 12 class sessions (2 hours/session) for the school's Equity Club. Vassar students develop lesson plans for the class sessions involving eighteen 4th and 5th grade students. Through this collaboration, Vassar students continue to learn more about political history, public education, attacks on public education, and the importance of critical pedagogy. Moreover, Vassar students have an opportunity to teach younger students more about political history.

BIOL-217-51 Human Physiology
Instructor: Kathleen Susman
Community Partners: American Lung Association, American Heart Association, Evergreen Minds, Dutchess Outreach

What happens when you go on a ski trip and stay at high altitude? How do diuretics help with the regulation of blood pressure? How do we maintain our body temperature or respond to an infection? How does the environment affect our physiology, particularly heat waves, noise pollution, or chemical toxins? This course considers the fundamental principles of human physiology. We examine genetic, cellular, organismal and evolutionary aspects of how our bodies operate to enable us to eat, sleep, move, breathe and reproduce. We consider how our mammalian bodies tackle the problems of terrestrial life, particularly during the Anthropocene. A weekly four hour workspace offers a unique opportunity for community engagement. Students work with a local agency focused on human health, nutrition or education and collaborate on a community-based project that applies knowledge of human physiology to important community efforts.