Call for Proposals and Participation: Community Engaged Learning & Well-Being Workshop

Community engaged learning (CEL)  is a praxis-oriented pedagogy that sees students engaging in projects developed collaboratively with community partners for mutually beneficial outcomes. CEL (also referred to in other contexts as 'community service learning' or 'service learning') can help promote and protect students’ mental health and overall well-being if it is facilitated ethically and underpinned by robust forms of reflection. As a key form of experiential learning, CEL emphasizes reciprocity and a dedication to collaborative community work. Our intention for this CEL & Well-Being Workshop is to share research, resources, and wise practices aimed at supporting students’ mental health and well-being before, during, and after their CEL experiences.  Through an array of sessions, we will work collectively to explore issues students may encounter during their CEL activities that can have both beneficial and detrimental impacts on their overall well-being. On the one hand, students may feel that they are making a positive difference in the lives of others, reducing their own anxiety about future job preparedness, and developing a greater sense of personal agency. On the other hand, students may see up-close the deleterious effects of systemic injustice in their own backyards and/or find painful parallels in their placement to their own life experiences. As a result, some students may feel empowered by the experience of working with community partners for the betterment of society, while others may feel disheartened by the unfairness they encounter and struggle with their capacity to address ‘wicked’ problems. These issues have become increasingly important since the COVID-19 pandemic and with the continuing growth in experiential learning and mental health considerations on university campuses. Given these contexts, how can we best support students’ overall well-being? Importantly, since CEL experiences exist on a continuum and are not usually wholly positive or negative, we encourage discussions that highlight the nuances at work in CEL undertakings.  For this one-day intensive workshop, we welcome both proposals and participation from faculty and staff at universities who have experience coordinating, facilitating, and/or participating in CEL programming, as well as from community partners who serve as co-educators in the CEL process. To enable a wide range of engagement with the topic of CEL and well-being, we have four proposal options that are described in greater detail below. Each format option has a corresponding online submission section. *Note: we have a dedicated student-led panel to proactively incorporate perspectives from CEL students. If you know students who would be interested in presenting on this panel, please forward them this Call and encourage them to submit a proposal. As a central outcome of this workshop, we intend to produce a short guidebook that includes tangible approaches to supporting CEL students’ well-being based on the wise practices shared by participants. If you are interested in participating in the conference without presenting via one of the four options below - which we welcome! - we ask that you RSVP to Sandra Smeltzer (ssmeltze@uwo.ca), Giada Ferrucci (gferrucc@uwo.ca), and/or Amala Poli (apoli@uwo.ca) by July 7, 2023, with the following information: 1) Name; 2) Position; 3) Affiliation; and 4) Email address. Upon acceptance, we will ask you to submit one CEL-focused mental health wise practice to be shared with attendees and be included in the guidebook noted above. *Note: there are no registration fees for this workshop. Lunch, refreshments, and light snacks will be provided for all participants at no cost. Deadline for submission (via the form below, in English or French): • Friday July 7, 2023 (by midnight, EST) Workshop date / time: • Friday November 3, 2023; 10:00 am - 5:00 pm Location: • Western University (London, Ontario) Questions / Information, contact: Sandra Smeltzer - ssmeltze@uwo.ca Giada Ferrucci - gferrucc@uwo.ca Amala Poli - apoli@uwo.ca This workshop is hosted by the Faculty of Information & Media Studies (FIMS) with support from Careers & Experience and the Medical Science Community Outreach (MaSCOt) program.