Civic Learning

This unique fellowship provides students with the opportunity to explore their strengths, values and passions in order to begin or continue forming their civic identity and individual role in working towards social change. The fellows meet biweekly for meetings, service projects, advocacy opportunities, leadership training and a chance to build a sense of community amongst the cohort. The fellowship is a year long commitment with the opportunity to continue through the program during their time at Salem State. Each year students engage in an advocacy campaign that addresses a campus or community need. Past campaigns have focused on campus hunger, LGBTQ+ rights, disability awareness, reproductive justice and mental health.

The civic engagement minor seeks to provide students with the opportunity to gain knowledge, skills and experiences to become informed and effective participants in civic and democratic life. The interdisciplinary 15-credit minor includes an Introduction to Civic Engagement course and capstone experience (Directed Study in Civic Engagement or Directed Field Experience in Civic Engagement). This minor provides students the flexibility to choose three courses from the following areas: politics/policy, communication and advocacy skills and social justice/social change, which include courses provided by departments across the university. Learn more about the civic engagement minor.

The Public Engagement Seal is a valuable transcript recognition for students who have demonstrated active participation in civic learning and public engagement at Salem State University. The Public Engagement Seal will prepare students to serve as public problem solvers in their own communities, which may include geographic, identity, and issue-based communities among others. Learn more about the requirements here.

The CCE offers a robust menu of faculty professional development opportunities including:

• Integrating civic learning and engagement within curriculum
• Anti-racist community engaged teaching
• Developing Equitable Community Partnership: Critically Engaged Civic Learning
• Tenure, Promotion, and Community Engagement
• Civic Engagement Faculty Learning Communities 
• Topics in Civic Engagement: Lunch and Learn Conversations

Salem State classes include community engaged components that prepare students with the knowledge, skills, and experiences to address the social, political, economic, and environmental issues facing our communities. These courses may include community-engaged course content, advocacy components, service projects, collaborations with community members, and community-based research.

Are you interested in what public problems you may be engaging with in your courses? All 30 academic departments offer courses that include community engaged learning. The following is a list of academic majors offered at Salem State along with the most common public problems studied within the discipline. Participating in courses within these majors will prepare students to identify and address these problems and others in their careers and communities. View a list of such courses in chemistry and physics, criminal justice, economics, geography and sustainability, history, politics, policy, and international relations, and sociology.

These principles were developed by faculty, staff, and students from four Massachusetts public universities as part of a project, “Building on the Cultural Wealth of Minoritized Students: Anti-racist Community-Engaged Programming, Pedagogies, and Practices,” funded by a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education. Drawing on the literature on anti-racist and community-engaged pedagogy and on input from students of color and community partners at each of the four campuses, this statement is designed to serve as a resource for community-engaged faculty adopting anti-racist pedagogy and practices. Read the full statement of principles here.

At Salem State, we use the phrase critically engaged civic learning (CECL) as an updated revision for the term "service-learning." The term service-learning is problematic as it invokes inequitable power dynamics that inherently privilege one group over another, with more privileged groups providing “service” to marginalized groups. CECL is an equity-based framework that views all constituent stakeholders (community members, community organizations, students, and educational institutions) as invested partners in the co-design, implementation, and evaluation of CECL initiatives. Founded on the redistribution of power and authority, this framework promotes civic learning and social change.

In addition to the CECL framework, the center also co-created a correlating assessment tool: The CECL Inventory for Social Change (CECL-ISC). CECL-ISC is designed to measure incremental and holistic change among stakeholders and in their communities. This instrument is unique in that it measures both student learning and the impact of CECL initiatives in the community.

The center utilizes the principles of CECL in our professional development opportunities with faculty to encourage equitable, reciprocal, and mutually beneficial partnerships with our communities. Learn more about Critically Engaged Civic Learning, our Inventory for Social Change, and other resources.