Community Engagement

Community Engagement

Community engagement offers students an opportunity to combine classroom theory and knowledge with practical community experience. In service-learning courses, students will, as part of the class, spend time volunteering in the community. Community engagement is the various pedagogies that link community service and academic study so that each strengthens the other. The basic theory of service-learning is Dewey’s: the interaction of knowledge and skills with experience is key to learning. Students learn best not by reading the Great Books in a closed room but by opening the doors and windows of experience (Thomas Ehrlich, in Barbara Jacoby and Associates, Service-Learning in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices, San Francisco, California, Jossey-Bass, 1996).

For more information on service-learning courses at Rollins College, the Office of Community Engagement, 407- 975-6406, or www.rollins.edu/communityengagement.