Faculty and Staff Resources

Center for Community Engagement staff assist with every aspect of Community Engaged Learning course design and facilitation, from project scoping and partnership development to assessing student and community impact. We also guide faculty and students through the logistics of beginning their placements and can hold in-class workshops for students on the principles and practices of equitable community engagement.

  1. Center for Community Engagement
  2. Faculty & Staff CEL Resources

faculty at workshop

Community Engaged Learning At Seattle University

Community Engaged Learning (CEL) is a credit-bearing educational experience during which students apply course material to contribute to equitable solutions for issues impacting one or more communities. Community engaged learning courses include reflection activities that integrate students' learning across classroom and community contexts.

Seattle University’s CEL efforts are guided by the following principles: 

  • Deepening Student Learning: Community engaged learning invites students to stretch their comfort zone and better understand academic concepts through experiential learning.
  • Responding to Community: The Sundborg Center for Community Engagement (CCE) listens to community-identified needs and priorities and matches community partners to Seattle University resources in ways that align with their goals.
  • Sustainable Partnerships: CCE maintains long-term relationships throughout central Seattle and supports Seattle University faculty and staff to develop sustainable partnerships that outlast academic terms.
  • Critical Reflection: Students reflect on the meaning and value of their Jesuit education and deepen their learning by integrating their academic and community experiences.
  • Centering Equity: Seattle University faculty, staff, and students support mutually beneficial partnerships with hope, respect, compassion, cultural humility, historical awareness, solidarity with those on the margins, and a commitment to healing, justice and reconciliation.
  • Developing Leaders: Seattle University students develop the disposition and capacity to respond to injustice and inhumanity and take positive action for the common good.
  • Collective Impact: Seattle University faculty, staff, and students come alongside community leaders, working across disciplines and leveraging diverse sources of knowledge for greater impact.

CCE works with faculty from every school and college at Seattle University to integrate community engagement into their courses. While every discipline and partnership is unique, we define three major types of CEL courses:

  • Placement-based Courses: Students work with a community organization for a specified number of hours throughout their course. Faculty support students to connect their experiences to course content.
  • Project-based Courses: Students complete a project that responds to the needs and priorities of a community or community-based organization. Students learn through practicing skills and reflecting on how their work contributes to broader impacts.

Scholarship documents many benefits of CEL for students. Benefits include an increase in civic attitudes and civic mindedness, gains in interpersonal skills such as collaboration and teamwork, and strong professional formation (Matthews et al, 2016, Chittum et al, 2022). Significantly, underserved students who participate in CEL are more likely to graduate than those who do not participate in these experiences (Finley & McNair, 2013).

Aligned with our Jesuit Mission of educating leaders for a just and humane world, CEL is known as a high-impact practice. Benefits of CEL include:

  • Amplifying the university’s curricular focus areas of sustainability and climate change, racial injustice and widening economic inequity, and rapid technological change and its societal and economic impacts.
  • Positively impacting student learning outcomes, particularly the learning of underserved students.
  • Improving the retention of students.
  • Providing students with professional formation, including positively influencing post graduate salaries.
  • Increasing students’ interpersonal skills such as communication, collaboration, and teamwork.
  • Increasing students’ civic mindedness and future intentions to work for social change.
  • Connecting our commitment to community engagement with our location to offer a compelling invitation to prospective students
  • Contributing significant additional resources to local organizations and institutions to address some of our regions’ most urgent challenges.

Expanding and deepening community engaged learning also offers many positive outcomes for Seattle and our region including:

  • Thousands of hours of direct service and organizational support
  • Support for community driven research and advocacy efforts
  • Seattle University graduates contributing to a strong workforce
  • Informed justice minded residents and voters
  • In a 2024 survey, 95% of community partner respondents said that working with SU is mutually beneficial and leads to positive outcomes toward their organizational goals.

CCE supports faculty and staff to facilitate transformative community experiences for students that address the needs and priorities of community-based organizations. We are here to help as you:

  • Develop and document new community partnerships
  • Access your impact on students and the community
  • Design or revise syllabi
  • Prepare to teach your CEL course
  • Seek resources for yourself or your students
  • Explore and utilize Redhawk Impact, Seattle University’s online platform for facilitating community engaged learning, tracking our community impacts, and promoting the needs and opportunities of our community partners.
  • Disseminate findings related to community engaged scholarship

CCE staff assists with every aspect of CEL course design and facilitation, from project scoping and partnership development to assessing student and community impact. We also guide faculty and students through the logistics of beginning their placements and can hold in-class workshops for students on the principles and practices of equitable community engagement.

Will you be teaching a community engaged learning course? Complete our support request form to get started or learn more about how CCE can help. Browse our upcoming professional development opportunities below.

We recommend getting in touch with us at least 10 weeks prior to teaching a new CEL course.

Support Request Form

Take the first step by completing this support request form.

Ways To Engage

CCE works with instructors to identify community organizations that offer CEL placements and projects to students. Our staff hold long-term partnerships with over 100 community-based organizations (schools, nonprofits and government agencies) and can connect you to partner's with aligned goals and interests.

Find Partners In Our Community

Explore our list of Affiliated Partners on Redhawk Impact, an online platform that allows community partners to post and manage engagement opportunities. Log in with your Seattle University credentials to filter by causes and types of opportunities.

CCE staff are here to brainstorm community engagement opportunities that fit your needs and connect you to interested partners. To get started, fill out our support request form.

Whether you are new to Community Engaged Learning (CEL) or are a seasoned CEL course instructor, CCE staff are here to support faculty to deepen their impact on students and community partners. Below are some of the primary ways we work with faculty across the university.

Workshops & Events

  • Every spring quarter, CCE offers an introductory four-part workshop series on Community Engaged Learning Pedagogy. Topics include foundations of CEL pedagogy, preparing yourself and your students for critical CEL, developing equitable partnerships, and designing effective reflection and assessment strategies for CEL. Faculty and staff are welcome to attend all four workshops or drop in for three or fewer. Participants who complete all four workshops will receive a $500 stipend.

  • The Community Engaged Learning Faculty Fellowship is a year-long, cohort-based program in which faculty receive resources, guidance, and community as they revise a syllabus to integrate community engaged learning. Fellows receive $2000 for completing the program.

  • Local Immersions. One of CCE's goals is to partner with faculty and staff to develop relationships with community partners throughout Central Seattle. Local Immersions and other networking events offer faculty and staff a deeper understanding of local issues, plant the seeds for community partnerships, and help faculty and staff learn experientially with colleagues from across campus.

CCE regularly hosts additional workshops and events open the Seattle University faculty, staff, students and community partners. Want to stay up to date on CCE's professional development offerings? Sign up for our Faculty and Staff Newsletter by emailing Cecilia Morales. 


Individualized Support
CCE staff are available to consult with individual faculty as you develop and teach your CEL course. We can share resources and research-informed best practices for you or your students. To discuss the following topics or other topics related to community engaged scholarship, please complete our support request form.

  • Preparing students for CEL
  • Teaching for social justice or DEI
  • Group facilitation
  • Developing CEL assignments
  • Assessment
  • Reflection
  • Partnership development and communication
  • Managing project-based work
  • Disseminating lessons learned

Interested in a particular type of professional development? Email Cecilia Morales with questions or suggestions for future programs.

CCE offers funding for faculty and departments to develop or deepen their community engaged pedagogy, connect with other engaged faculty across campus and develop authentic relationships with community partners.

CEL Fellowships

The Community Engaged Learning (CEL) Faculty Fellowship program is a year-long professional development opportunity in which fellows are supported to integrate a community engaged component into an existing course.

Fellows participate in a three-day Summer Intensive on the theory and practice of CEL in early September and meet regularly throughout the year to support each other in the process of revising and teaching their course. Fellows also receive a stipend and individualized support from the program’s faculty director and CCE staff.

Applications open during the spring quarter. Faculty new to CEL as well as experienced practitioners are welcome. The Community Engaged Learning Faculty Fellows Program is open to all faculty, tenure track and non-tenure track.