Community-Connected Learning Course

In Fall 2020, we launched our CCE staff-led experiential learning course: INTD 0121 - Community-Connected Learning. 

In this course, you will pair your community engagement with academic coursework and reflection. You’ll get to develop social issue knowledge, collaborative skills, and civic identity that complements your new or existing community partnership experiences!

How It Works

In this course, students apply relevant coursework to place-based contexts by collaborating with community partners independently or in groups to complete a community-connected learning project that contribute to the public good. The CCE instructor(s) and Project Assistant (PA) meet with students weekly in cohorts to discuss and develop civic knowledge, skills, and identities related to their project work.

Final projects may take a variety of forms, such as a portfolio, media production, or paper. Students should contact the course instructor to discuss, confirm and/or receive assistance in identifying a community partner and to begin to define their projects.

Curriculum

Community-connected learning supports civic knowledge cultivation, skill-building, and identity development. Classroom learning will introduce you to concepts, commitments, skills, and social issue knowledge that you can try out with your project placement. 

Through readings, interviews, media exploration, group discussion, and written analysis, students develop social issue knowledge, collaborative skills, and stronger self-awareness that complement new or existing community partnership experiences!

Learning Goals

Civic Knowledge. You will develop, express and apply knowledge of community context, and how communities structure, govern and sustain themselves as they work toward their goals.

• Identify community structures relative to resources, services and governance
• Understand and describe the complex construction of the community
• Apply understanding of community to partnership work that centers community values and goals

Civic Skills. You will identify, develop and apply civic skills to effectively and appropriately contribute to communities through partnership and collaboration with community organizations and networks.

• Identify and describe habits and practices of collaborative community engagement
• Understand how civic skills are applied in a specific community context
• Apply civic skills in the context of specific collaborative community partnership work

Civic Identity. You will deepen your understanding of the values and perspectives that shape and inform your approach to ethical, authentic community engaged work.

• Identify and describe components of civic identity
• Understand and analyze how identity impacts and is shaped by community context, and the implications of this in specific project work
• Apply your understanding of identity, positionality and access to participation, in the context of your specific project, to ethical and equitable community collaboration

Your individual experience(s) and skill(s) developed will differ depending on the experiential learning placement you choose and the knowledge, skills, and commitments/identities you choose to intentionally grow and reflect upon.

Project Placement

An important component of the Community Connected Learning course is the project placement with a local organization, with whom you’ll spend 3-5 hours working most weeks of the semester. Our projects are collaborative, mutually beneficial experiences with local community organizations eager to support student learning.

Example Projects

• Connected directly with community elders at the Eastview Senior Living Community to provide programming, companionship, and community building experiences.
• Worked with Vermont Emergency Management to develop data visualizations for the State Hazard Mitigation Plan, looking specifically at connections between community vulnerability and the housing crisis, food security, and climate migration.
• Analyzed US Census data and developed case studies for Addison Housing Works to explore policy and procedural questions that need to be addressed, including how to make housing development more likely to address the housing crisis in Vermont.
• Volunteered with the Ilsley Library’s LEGO Club to support child and teen learning and learn how to manage small groups of children in a supportive and educational environment.
• Developed social media content and other marketing materials to build community investment in Middlebury Town Theater’s expansion and renovation.
• Developed a website and assisted with documentary production for the Vermont Beaver Association to grow community awareness of beaver habitat and conservation.

Connect with Us

Fall 2025 Instructor:

Jason Duquette-Hoffman, Assistant Director of Privilege & Poverty

Spring 2026 Instructor:

Shannon McClain, Assistant Director of Youth & Educational Partnerships

Please check with your advisor or reach out to the Center for Community Engagement at communityengagement@middlebury.edu to learn more!