Our Story

Motivated by sympathy for the plight of K -12 educators during the early days of the pandemic, instructors of one course in University of Illinois’ Grainger College of Engineering saw an opportunity to help. They reached out to a local middle school with an offer to develop educational media for their science classes, which would be produced by teams of engineering students. Though the production was not of flawless quality, the recipient was pleased with the content. The idea for a multi-disciplinary Service-Learning Ecosystem was seeded.

To encourage service-learning incorporation in more engineering courses, a team comprised of faculty and specialists from engineering, education, and media is building an ecosystem that will connect university instructors (faculty and graduate teaching assistants) with local partners; provide educational and multi-media support, guided by experts in education and media; and serve the local community and beyond.