CCP Resources

The Center for Community Partnerships believes in an informed and prepared approach to ensure success and mutual benefit to those involved in community engagement. We offer the following resources to support the work you do within collaborative, community-engaged contexts.

GivePulse is an online hub for community engagement that connects RISD with nearby groups, organizations and service opportunities, and helps facilitate the many ways students, faculty, staff and alumni do engaged work here and beyond.

For both the campus community and our partners, GivePulse makes it easier top promote and discover opportunities to get involved in socially engaged work. By creating a profile, you’ll help build community while staying connected and aware of upcoming, ongoing and recurring initiatives.

For more, go to GivePulse’s overview of platform basics, including how-tos and quick guides for administrators and volunteers. You can also watch a quick intro or see GivePulse’s community partner training presentation for a deep dive about how to use the platform’s administrative tools.

Community Engagement: A broad designation, defined by the Carnegie Foundation as a collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources. The purpose is the partnership of college and university knowledge and resources with those of the public and private sectors to enrich scholarship, research, and creative activity; enhance curriculum, teaching and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues; and contribute to the public good. (Carnegie)

Community Based Research: A collaboration between community groups and researchers for the purpose of creating new knowledge or understanding about a practical community issue in order to bring about change. The issue is generated by the community and community members participate in all aspects of the research process. Community-based research therefore is collaborative, participatory, empowering, systematic and transformative. (Hills & Mullett, 2000)

Community Engaged Teaching: A teaching and learning strategy that uses reflection to link community engagement with academic course objectives to enrich the educational experience of students, teach civic responsibility, and meet the needs of a community.

Civic Engagement: Civic engagement means working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes. (Ehrlich, 2000)

Civic Learning: A process through which people develop the knowledge, skills, and commitments to interact effectively with fellow community members to address shared problems. (MA Department of Higher Education)

Community Service: Work that is done without pay to help people in a community (Merriam Webster)

Service-Learning: Service-learning is an approach to teaching and learning in which students use academic and civic knowledge and skills to address genuine community needs. (National Youth Leadership Council)

Internship: A form of experiential learning that integrates knowledge and theory learned in the classroom with practical application and skills development in a professional setting. Internships give students the opportunity to gain valuable applied experience and make connections in professional fields they are considering for career paths; and give employers the opportunity to guide and evaluate talent. (National Association of Colleges and Employers)

Public Engagement: Public engagement describes the myriad of ways in which the activity and benefits of higher education and research can be shared with the public. Engagement is by definition a two-way process, involving interaction and listening, with the goal of generating mutual benefit. (https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk)

Reciprocity: Requires a continuous and intentional practice of valuing and drawing on the various forms of knowledge, resources and other assets that each person contributes to the shared activity and outcomes to a degree that the experience is felt by all to be equitable. (Janke & Clayton, 2012; Dostilio et al., 2012)

CSI: The Center for Student Involvement (CSI) is an on-campus hub that offers RISD students several opportunities to grow as critical thinkers and global citizens. In advancing this mission, CSI creates and oversees programs and initiatives in the following areas:

• campus activities
• leadership development
• service and experiential learning

LACE: Leadership and Community Engagement Fellowship is a year-long service program that grants $1,200 in support of educational expenses for 300 hours of public service.

POD: Project Open Door is a college access initiative for urban youth housed in the RISD Department of Teaching + Learning in Art + Design (TLAD). It draws creative teens attending public and charter high schools in Rhode Island’s urban core cities of Central Falls, Pawtucket, Providence and Woonsocket to participate in free out-of-school time art and design programming.

TLAD: Teaching + Learning in Art + Design (TLAD) offers graduate students a progressive and dynamic center of inquiry and practice that directly links academic study to engagement with communities beyond campus.

TLAB: Teaching & Learning Lab offers interactive faculty workshops and development opportunities that support the Center for Social Equity & Inclusion’s mission to cultivate inclusive and innovative curricula and pedagogies.

Sources

Carnegie. Retrieved from: https://www.brown.edu/swearer/carnegie/about

Community Service. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/community service

Dostilio, L. D., Brackmann, S. M., Edwards, K. E., Harrison, B., Kliewer, B. W., & Clayton, P. H. (2012). Reciprocity: Saying what we mean and meaning what we say. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 19(1), 17–32.

Ehrlich, T. (2000). Civic responsibility and higher education. Phoenix, Ariz: Oryx Press

National Youth Leadership Council. (n.d.). Service-Learning. Retrieved from https://www.nylc.org/page/WhatisService-Learning

Janke, E. M., & Clayton, P. H. (2012). Excellence in community engagement and community-engaged scholarship: Advancing the discourse at UNCG (Vol. 1). Greensboro, NC: University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Hills, M., Mullett, J. 2000 Community-based research: creating evidence-based practice for health and social change

(n.d.). National Association of Colleges and Employers Retrieved from https://www.naceweb.org/about-us/advocacy/position-statements/position-statement-us-internships/

What is public engagement? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/about-engagement/what-public-engagement

Janke, E. M., & Clayton, P. H. (2012). Excellence in community engagement and community-engaged scholarship: Advancing the discourse at UNCG (Vol. 1). Greensboro, NC: University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Reviewed: December 2022