Community Engaged Learning Faculty Fellows Chosen for 2024-25

The fellows are Maxwell Dahlquist (Earth and Environmental Systems), Eric Ezell (Earth and Environmental Systems), Lucia García-Santana (Spanish), and Clarissa Peterson (Politics/African and African-American Studies). Community engaged learning (CEL) is a pedagogy in which students integrate academic and field-based knowledge by working with a community partner(s) to produce an output that will assist the organization. Community partners serve as public scholars whose lived experiences inform students’ theoretical and conceptual knowledge. Through community-based experiences and reflection on those experiences, students learn about the complexities of course concepts while also deepening skills in collaboration, dialogue, empathy, close listening, and time management.  

The fellows’ courses will be spread across the academic year. Peterson will teach “Voting While Black,” and will partner with Chattanooga voter mobilization organizations during the election. Dahlquist will teach “Environmental Hazards,” partnering with local environmental organizations to promote student learning. Ezell’s course “Equitable Environmental Education” will partner with some of the same organizations. García-Santana’s course on Latin American and Latinx revolutions and poetry will work with local organizations that support migrant families. The one-year fellows position comes with a stipend and the expectation of teaching the course, participating in CEL faculty development efforts, and completing a project to promote CEL on campus. This is the second year for the rejuvenated fellows program, an initiative that fell by the wayside during the pandemic. During 2023-2024, faculty fellows taught on community-based theater, theories of punishment, program evaluation, and the psychology of drug use. The 2023-2024 cohort also mentored others interested in CEL, designed a CEL training session, and worked with the Office of Civic Engagement on statements related to CEL and tenure and promotion processes for faculty.

Faculty come to CEL for a variety of reasons. Garcia-Santana writes that she wants “to ignite (when it is dormant) and nurture (when it is already in expansion) civic responsibility and compassion in each student. The collaboration with the communities expands our awareness and sense of commitment and reliability as individuals while offering a new creative lens about what we can contribute to the whole.” Dahlquist hopes his course will help students to “develop practical scientific and people skills to make them more effective at environmental problem-solving in their communities, specifically on issues related to natural hazards.” For Peterson, she wants her CEL course to help students better understand why people participate in US politics and the role participation plays in fostering a better polity for all.