UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A year after its inaugural workshop, a Provost Endorsement Program focused on how best to embed experiential learning and sustainability into the curriculum is graduating its first faculty cohort and welcoming a new round of faculty participants.
To earn this endorsement in Experiential Learning and Sustainability: Curricular Engaged Scholarship for a Sustainable Future, Penn State faculty members attend the required workshop and integrate an experiential learning project into one of their courses. They also complete reflections and participate in meetings of the Engaged Scholarship Community of Practice (ESCoP) twice per semester. The next ESCoP meeting will be held on Sept. 19 (registration information below).
“This Provost Endorsement Program has met an obvious need,” said Ilona Ballreich, director of the Sustainable Communities Collaborative and associate director for experiential learning. “It provides an opportunity to offer more comprehensive training than what could be facilitated through the ESCoP.”
Ballreich and her colleague, Krista Bailey, associate director for campus sustainability, designed both an in-person and an asynchronous version of the workshop and program.
“Through our work with the community of practice, we learned that while in-person training is preferred, schedule conflicts often prohibit participation,” Bailey said. “An online Canvas workshop with modules that also supports reflection for the in-person participants was our answer.”
Ballreich works primarily with community partners through the Sustainable Communities Collaborative and Bailey is dedicated to engaging students in Living Labs campus projects. Bailey explained that experiential learning turns the entire campus and the world beyond into an interactive classroom, while engaged scholarship connects coursework, academic research and experiences outside of the classroom to community-identified concerns. Both approaches are explored within this Provost Endorsement Program and the ESCoP.
“The workshop made me realize that engaged scholarship comes in many shapes and forms and there is no one way to practice it,” said Frans Padt, teaching professor in community and economic development within the College of Agriculture Science’s Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education.
Ballreich explained that this inherent variety is part of what makes real-world projects both on and off campus such great learning experiences for students.
“Working with a partner on a specific site requires so much more than just applying classroom knowledge,” she said. “Students practice soft skills as they interact with their partners, apply systems thinking as they contemplate impacts and consequences, and learn about environments they are not necessarily familiar or comfortable with.”
In addition to the workshop, the Engaged Scholarship Community of Practice is designed to further help faculty embrace engaged scholarship and experiential learning in the classroom.
“The ESCoP is intended to be a forum for faculty to share,” Bailey explained. “We as organizers primarily react to input from faculty — what they want to learn or know about. Naturally, we have additional resources that we share, and on occasion, we tap into our network of engagement experts for special presentations.”
This fall, ESCoP sessions are planned for Sept. 19 and Nov. 20 and are open to faculty from across the University, independent of the Provost Endorsement Program. Interested faculty can register for the Sept. 19 session at this link, and for the Nov. 20 session at this link.
Although the fall orientation workshop has already taken place, and the spring online cohort is nearly full, Bailey and Ballreich are open to working with faculty individually if they want to explore incorporating on- or off-campus experiential learning into their curriculum. This flexibility toward engaging faculty and campus or community partners has been part of the success of both the Living Labs and the Sustainable Communities Collaborative programs, which have experienced continued growth.
“Our role is to assist in the matchmaking process as well as with the more technical aspects of experiential learning in the classroom,” Ballreich said. “Providing training via a Provost Endorsement workshop and a platform for sharing among peers like the ESCoP are just a few of the tools we can offer.”
While earning his endorsement in the program, Bryan Wang, teaching professor of biology at Penn State Berks, further explored experiential learning and engaged scholarship. In a reflection, he quoted Ernest Boyer, one of the leading scholars on engaged scholarship: “[S]cholarship has to prove its worth not on its own terms, but by service to the nation and the world.” This ultimately is the ambition of the program: to leverage Penn State as a resource in and for our communities in service of the land-grant mission, and to prepare students to enter the workforce with the necessary skills for success.
Faculty interested in learning more about or registering for the program can do so here.
Anyone with questions about the Provost Endorsement program, the Engaged Scholarship Community of Practice, or the Sustainable Communities Collaborative or Living Labs programs can contact Ballreich at ixb20@psu.edu or Bailey at kbailey@psu.edu.