Tien Showers Community Engagement

Community Engagement Preparation Resources

At the Morgridge Center for Public Service, we understand the power of community engagement as a tool for learning and relationship building. However, we also realize that to be best prepared for equitable and respectful engagement takes some work. We offer a range of resources to help support students, staff and faculty strengthen their understanding of community engagement and learn strategies and dispositions that can lead to mutually beneficial projects and partnerships.

The Morgridge Center provides interactive workshops, online modules, and other educational resources for UW–Madison students (student organizations, classes, residence halls, etc.), staff and faculty who are involved in community-based work.

It is crucial that we think critically about our work with community members and organizations to ensure that we respect the existing work put forth by community leaders, and find ways to mobilize our resources as a campus community to support their efforts and initiatives.

Request a workshop for the 2024-25 academic year.

Think critically about your work with community members. Ensure respect for the existing work put forth by community leaders. Find ways to mobilize our privilege as a campus community to support their efforts and initiatives. Interested in getting involved in the community, but not sure where to start? We are excited to invite you to attend our workshops!

All workshops will take place at the Round Room in the Morgridge Center for Public Service located on the first floor of the Red Gym! Please register for any (or all) of the workshops you are interested.

Faculty and instructional staff can create a Community-based Learning course as a brand new offering or add a CBL component can to an existing course or support high-quality community-based learning (CBL) experiences for community partners and students.

Interested in teaching or support a Community-based Learning course? Start here.

The Student Organization Partnership Program (SOPP) seeks to meet the needs of both UW-Madison students wanting to engage in community-based work through Registered Student Organizations (RSOs) and community partner organizations seeking to build long-term partnerships with these RSOs.

Learn more about the Student Organization Partnership Program (SOPP)

Community-Engaged Scholarship Specialist Cory Sprinkel: sprinkel@wisc.edu

Curriculum Offerings

Online Modules
Consider assigning students up to three separate community engagement preparation modules. These modules, detailed more below, are designed as self-guided courses that engage students in reflection, readings, knowledge checks and more to explore the content. Each module takes somewhere between an hour to an hour and a half to complete. Hosted through Canvas, these modules can be easily added to your course page as an assignment. We can also work to provide you with reflection and follow-up materials to better integrate the modules into your course. Interested in accessing our Canvas modules? Request access here.

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Intro to Community Engagement

  • Articulate your own motivations for and understanding of community engagement
  • Analyze how one’s approach to community engagement can impact the community
  • Compare various principles of community engagement

Contextualizing Community

  • Build skills for learning about communities and community organizations 
  • Reflect on the connection between positionality, knowledge construction, and intellectual humility
  • Develop an understanding of cultural humility and self-awareness and how those concepts impact community engagement 
  •  Consider how systemic and institutional issues may impact community outcomes and experiences

Engaging with Community

  • Articulate the role of relationships in community engagement and identify dispositions that contribute to positive relationship formation 
  • Identify the various considerations that should be applied prior to entering, engaging, or exiting communities
  • Examine the opportunities for and barriers to engaging in equitable partnerships
  • Reflect on opportunities to maintain engaged on a social issue after completing a community engaged experience

Community-based Research

  1. Gain an understanding of the principles and practices developed through community-based research 
  2. Strengthen relationship building skills for working with communities 
  3. Explore the variety of methods for Community-Based Participatory Research

Interactive Workshops
Request an interactive workshop for your course that can be facilitated by the community Engagement preparation specialist or one of the community engagement education interns.

These workshops, which typically last an hour and half, are intended to engage your students in meaningful discussion about activities to strengthen their understanding of and approach to community engagement. Interested in attending a workshop?

Sign up with this workshop form.

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Intro to Community Engagement

  • Articulate individual motivations and goals for community engagement/”service”  
  • Define cultural humility and recognize its implications for engaging appropriately with communities 
  • Recognize the role of root causes in informing the social issue and engagement 
  • Understand best practices and key considerations for engaging with communities

Entering, Engaging and Exiting Community

  • Understand how to analyze a community partner’s mission, history, and context and how those factors inform engagement 
  • Contrast different principles of community engagement and define their own principles 
  • Apply active listening and relationship building strategies to their engagement 
  • Explain the importance of sustainability as it relates to community engagement 

Understanding Power and Privilege

  • Examine their own identities and consider their implications for shaping engagement 
  • Apply an equity lens to engagement as it relates to partnerships, impact, and power
  • Develop personal understanding of allyship and growth opportunities related to it (lifelong learning)

Unearthing Community Wealth

Explore how communities influence the wealth of individuals! Develop an understanding of generational trauma and how institutional racism plays into the lives of communities of color.

Preparing Students for Community Engagement

  • This workshop, intended for faculty and staff, allows participants to: 
  • Articulate the importance of student preparation for community engagement and identify preparation needs specific to their course/program 
  • Understand how to leverage core components of community-engaged learning pedagogies to increase student preparation and success 
  • Consider skills and practices to engage with challenging conversations and issues in the classroom
  • Identify opportunities to improve community partnerships and integrate community voice and knowledge into the classroom/program 
  • Consider the role of cultural and intellectual humility within community engagement

Special Topics

Our interns and staff are also equipped to facilitate a number of other sessions on topics such as, critical reflection, active listening, virtual engagement strategies, and more. Let us know if you have a specific idea you want to explore.