Faculty and Staff Resources

Seattle University’s CEL efforts are guided by the following principles: 

• Deepening Student Learning: Community engaged learning invites students to stretch their comfort zone and better understand academic concepts through experiential learning.
• Responding to Community: The Sundborg Center for Community Engagement (CCE) listens to community-identified needs and priorities and matches community partners to Seattle University resources in ways that align with their goals.
• Sustainable Partnerships: CCE maintains long-term relationships throughout central Seattle and supports Seattle University faculty and staff to develop sustainable partnerships that outlast academic terms.
• Critical Reflection: Students reflect on the meaning and value of their Jesuit education and deepen their learning by integrating their academic and community experiences.
• Centering Equity: Seattle University faculty, staff, and students support mutually beneficial partnerships with hope, respect, compassion, cultural humility, historical awareness, solidarity with those on the margins, and a commitment to healing, justice and reconciliation.
• Developing Leaders: Seattle University students develop the disposition and capacity to respond to injustice and inhumanity and take positive action for the common good.
• Collective Impact: Seattle University faculty, staff, and students come alongside community leaders, working across disciplines and leveraging diverse sources of knowledge for greater impact.

CCE works with faculty from every school and college at Seattle University to integrate community engagement into their courses. While every discipline and partnership is unique, we define three major types of CEL courses:

• Placement-based Courses: Students work with a community organization for a specified number of hours throughout their course. Faculty support students to connect their experiences to course content.
• Project-based Courses: Students complete a project that responds to the needs and priorities of a community or community-based organization. Students learn through practicing skills and reflecting on how their work contributes to broader impacts.

Scholarship documents many benefits of CEL for students. Benefits include an increase in civic attitudes and civic mindedness, gains in interpersonal skills such as collaboration and teamwork, and strong professional formation (Matthews et al, 2016, Chittum et al, 2022). Significantly, underserved students who participate in CEL are more likely to graduate than those who do not participate in these experiences (Finley & McNair, 2013).

Aligned with our Jesuit Mission of educating leaders for a just and humane world, CEL is known as a high-impact practice. Benefits of CEL include:

• Amplifying the university’s curricular focus areas of sustainability and climate change, racial injustice and widening economic inequity, and rapid technological change and its societal and economic impacts.
• Positively impacting student learning outcomes, particularly the learning of underserved students.
• Improving the retention of students.
• Providing students with professional formation, including positively influencing post graduate salaries.
• Increasing students’ interpersonal skills such as communication, collaboration, and teamwork.
• Increasing students’ civic mindedness and future intentions to work for social change.
• Connecting our commitment to community engagement with our location to offer a compelling invitation to prospective students
• Contributing significant additional resources to local organizations and institutions to address some of our regions’ most urgent challenges.

Expanding and deepening community engaged learning also offers many positive outcomes for Seattle and our region including:

• Thousands of hours of direct service and organizational support
• Support for community driven research and advocacy efforts
• Seattle University graduates contributing to a strong workforce
• Informed justice minded residents and voters
• In a 2024 survey, 95% of community partner respondents said that working with SU is mutually beneficial and leads to positive outcomes toward their organizational goals.

CCE supports faculty and staff to facilitate transformative community experiences for students that address the needs and priorities of community-based organizations. We are here to help as you:

• Develop and document new community partnerships
• Access your impact on students and the community
• Design or revise syllabi
• Prepare to teach your CEL course
• Seek resources for yourself or your students
• Explore and utilize Redhawk Impact, Seattle University’s online platform for facilitating community engaged learning, tracking our community impacts, and promoting the needs and opportunities of our community partners.
• Disseminate findings related to community engaged scholarship

CCE staff assists with every aspect of CEL course design and facilitation, from project scoping and partnership development to assessing student and community impact. We also guide faculty and students through the logistics of beginning their placements and can hold in-class workshops for students on the principles and practices of equitable community engagement.

Will you be teaching a community engaged learning course? Complete our support request form to get started or learn more about how CCE can help. Browse our upcoming professional development opportunities below.

We recommend getting in touch with us at least 10 weeks prior to teaching a new CEL course.