Support for Course Instructors
Resources
Givepulse Subgroup: Teaching Community Engages Scholarship
All faculty are welcome to join this community, where we share resources and ideas, and receive Nashman Center announcements. Adjust your settings to control how frequently you wish to receive email notifications.
Faculty Guide to Writing the Community Engaged Syllabus
This Guide includes theory-based recommendations for communicating the intentionality of your course to students. It also provides template language to use/adapt to your own syllabus.
Student Guide to Community Engaged Scholarship Courses
Instructors can excerpt language from this Guide into their syllabus or link students to the entire guide. Subject matter includes:
- Checklist for implementing community engagement initiatives
- Sample agenda for meeting community partners
- How to report service activities in Givepulse
- Advice for staying safe while serving
Faculty often ask about the risk of sending students to the community. Of course, as you and your community partners design the students' service initiative, planning for student safety must be a consideration. If students will be serving directly on-site at any time during their projects, they should complete the Risk and Liability Waiver form. This form is completed electronically, and is available on Givepulse from your course page.
Step-by-Step Guide to DC Public Schools Service Clearance
To serve with DCPS and several youth serving organizations in DC, DCPS Clearance is required (and valid for two years). The process involves background checks and fingerprinting and can take 2-3 weeks, so strongly encourage students start as soon as possible.
Research and Literature on Community Engaged Scholarship
The Nashman Center curates the best resources from the community engagement field, including research articles, practical toolkits, peer reviewed journal recommendations, professional associations, and sources of grant funding.
Course Guides
Every course is assigned to a member of our student staff who serves as a Course Guide. Expect an email introduction the first week of classes. Instructor and guide work together to determine the best ways the guide can support you and your students. Suggestions include:
- Help students connect with community partners, advising students who are new to community engagement experiences.
- Field student questions about how to report their service activities in Givepulse.
- Regularly review student service reports and alert the instructor to any problems or reflections that should be addressed.
- Communicate with community partners to ensure the student projects are meeting their expectations and going to plan.
- Collect liability waivers for students serving on-site. Course Guides can communicate directly with your students and let you know when all forms are submitted.
- Collect anecdotes, photos or other artifacts from your students and community partners to help us better describe the impact of your course for partners and student learning.
- Forward your students information about additional Nashman Center opportunities, like the Clinton Global Initiative, student grant opportunities, or the Knapp Fellowship program.
GWServes.Givepulse
Course Instructor Guide to Mng Course Page
Givepulse is the Nashman Center's platform for finding and reporting community engagement activities. Givepulse helps the Nashman Center monitor and share information about GW’s campus-community relationships. The ability to share “who is doing what, where” helps us all work more collaboratively, ultimately improving our effectiveness with the community.
All GW students and faculty have a Givepulse account, accessible by using their GW email account with the same sign-on information. For courses instructors, Givepulse simplifies your ability to monitor where students are serving and their progress toward meeting course requirements.
- Direct students to information on projects/community organizations you have already chosen for the course
- Recommend search terms for students to findtheir own community organizations to serve
- Distribute and collect liability waivers
- Monitor student activities, including where each student is serving, what they are doing there, and how many hours they have completed so far
- Communicate with community organizations about on-going student progress, share your syllabus, and collect feedback through internal communications or surveys
- Identify new community partners by browsing the community organization profile pages
- Utilize data collected here to report and analyze students’ service and impact at the course and department level, from year to year
All Community Engaged Scholarship courses at GW have a course page on Givepulse. As the administrator of the page, you are encouraged to add more information to it.
Panels and Workshops
The Nashman Center frequently convenes faculty for seminars, workshops, and panels. To ensure you receive these event announcements, join the Givepulse subgroup, Teaching Community Engaged Scholarship and/or subscribe to the Nashman Faculty Update e-newsletter.
Community Partner Connections
Each summer, the Nashman Center staff meets with our closest campus partners to discuss their priorities for the coming year, including their interest in course-based partnerships. Reach out to us for helpful connections to community organizations who have already expressed interest in working with GW.