The English Undergraduate Advising Office is excited to announce a new partnership with the U of I School of Social Work’s Community Learning Lab (CLL) for Spring 2016.
The Community Learning Lab is looking for 10-15 English, Creative Writing, or Teaching of English students to get involved in community projects for the Spring semester. If a lot of students are interested in working with CLL, they can offer even more opportunities in future semesters. Some projects are open to 2 or 3 students, so you have the option to collaborate with a friend of classmate if you’d like. Each project will involve no more than 25 hours of work during a single semester.
To get involved, send an email ssw-cll@illinois.edu, explaining that you are an English department major interested in CLL opportunities. You will receive a list of available projects and a link for signing up for whichever project interests you most.
This partnership will give English, Creative Writing, and Teaching of English students the opportunity to acquire valuable professional experience and to practice real-world job skills by doing community service projects for organizations in Champaign-Urbana. By offering invaluable assistance to organizations that need their help, English students will develop connections to the local community and expand their college experience beyond the borders of campus.
To learn more about this collaboration and what it means for our students, I recently talked with Katie Shumway from the Community Learning Lab.
Can you tell me a little about the Community Learning Lab? What are its goals? How does it help connect the University to the Champaign-Urbana community?
The whole point of CLL is to create a mutually beneficial relationship between the campus and the community. Through our program, community partners (which can include non-profit agencies, fire departments, police departments, schools, and even some for-profit agencies) submit project requests to our online database. We examine those requests for projects and match them with courses on campus whose curriculum is in line with the needs of the project. We’ve seen that manifest in a lot of Continue reading “Putting Your Skills into Practice: Spring 2016 Community Service Opportunities for English, CW, and ToE Students”