Civic Engagement Resources for our Community Partners
Our community partners are essential to civic engagement at Pacific. Together we can serve the mission of your organization, facilitate student learning, and meet the needs of our community. Our community partners can submit information about volunteer positions and other kinds of placements at the Submit an Opportunity tab on our blog.
Center for Civic Engagement staff can help you identify how to best work with students, faculty, and staff or spread the word about opportunities at your organization. Please contact us for more information.
Types of Civic Engagement
Civic engagement takes many forms, and the CCE can help you determine which of these models will meet your needs and how to connect with students, faculty, or staff appropriate for the task.
Course-Based Civic Engagement: Faculty integrate a civic engagement component into their course and require students to participate. An entire class may serve one organization together, or individual students could seek out different organizations for placement. Duration is typically one semester (14-16 weeks) and students may have specific course requirements (such as number of hours) and learning objectives to fulfill.
Problem-Based Service-Learning: Students focus on a specific project, much like consultants. Community partners identify a particular need (e.g. website work, mural design, or invasive species removal plan) and students draw from their academic knowledge to complete the task. The project could be for a course or independent study.
Community-Based Research: Working with community partners on an identified need, students conduct research, evaluation, or assessment projects drawing from the research methodologies of their discipline. Project duration depends on the research question and could carry through multiple terms and sets of students.
Special Projects: Students approach an organization to offer a specific skill (e.g. teaching nutrition, or building a garden), or organizations identify a need and recruit skilled students. The project may be outside of what the organization typically offers, but is in line with the mission.
Volunteers: Individual students and student groups volunteer just like any other community member. Volunteer work is not connected to academic courses and could be short-term or require a commitment.