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Academic Engagement
Students in Prof. Jake Nagasawa’s course “Not Your Model Minority: Japanese Americans from Incarceration to Redress and Beyond” visited Fort Snelling in March of 2024 to explore the “Many Voices, Many Stories” exhibit focusing on Japanese Americans who were recruited during WWII to join the Military Intelligence Service Language School at Fort Snelling, often while their families were incarcerated in concentration camps throughout the US.
Students munch on freshly pulled carrots during a field visit to Common Harvest Farm in Osceola, WI with Bill Moseley’s Geography 232 class.
Students in Maria Fedorova’s Revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union and Valeriia Witzig’s Advanced Russian courses went to the Museum of Russian Art. The Community Engagement Center helped plan the trip with support from the Project Pericles grant.
As part of the Democracy in Action course, students urged fellow students to engage the historical U.S. 2020 General Election.
Using the History Harvest Model, Professors Rebecca Wingo, Amy Sullivan, and Crystal Moten partnered with Rondo Avenue, Inc., the representative council of the Rondo neighborhood. The History Harvest is a student-driven digital archive that seeks community contributions, empowering the community to stake a claim over their own digital identity, memories, and history.
Project Pericles Funding

Project Pericles has two applications open for faculty to deepen connections between academic content, community-engaged learning, and civic participation during the next academic year 2025-26: a $1,000 Civic Engagement Mini-Grant, empowering students to engage with public issues in inclusive and collaborative ways in order to foster more positive and broader civic participation, as well as $3,000 grant to enhance courses with components that bridge academic learning with civic, democratic, and community engagement in meaningful ways.

Civic Engagement Mini-Grant Periclean Course Enhancement Grant

What is community-based learning?

Community-based Learning (CBL) integrates meaningful community partnerships with instruction and critical reflection that focuses on building and sustaining relationships that center community knowledge(s) and agency in order to creatively solve problems, engage community-identified needs and initiate transformative change.

Macalester is a longtime leader in linking academic learning to community involvement. High quality community-based learning (CBL) brings forth multiple layers of learning, teaching and problem solving. Student work such as tutoring, research, analysis, or problem solving holds reciprocal benefits for the students and their community partner. Aligning learning objectives with an existing community need is a critical step in these real world, engaging learning experiences.

Each semester, the Community Engagement Center strives to provide necessary resources and support for faculty who would like to embed community engagement into their curriculum. In the 2023-24 academic year, 24 Macalester departments offered 72 courses with community engagement components.

Interested faculty can complete the above form, and Cait Bergeon ([email protected]), Faculty Engagement Program Associate will be in touch to assist you. Cait works with faculty to offer guidance, brainstorm, and establish or tap into partnerships with local community organizations.

Request Course Support

Community Partners

Scholarly Resources

Faculty Resources