Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning

Duquesne University is committed to helping students develop their ability to work collaboratively with others to build a more just and verdant world. This form of education rests heavily on community-engaged experiences that put the knowledge, skills, and values of their disciplines into action.

Using a two-tiered model of community-engaged learning, we offer students the opportunity to engage in community-based experiences throughout our degree programs. Community-engaged learning differs from volunteerism, community service, internships, and field education through the:

• emphasis on students' civic development,
• use of ongoing, structured reflection, and
• emphasis on sustained, reciprocal partnerships between faculty and community partners.

Engagement denotes collaborations between communities and our faculty or students. Engagement can take many forms (such as community-based research, policy work, co-learning arrangements, or dialogue groups) but consistently strives to develop authentic relationships between the people involved and surfaces the social and environmental problems that the collaboration addresses.