Fall 2026 ELF Cohort: Community-Engaged Teaching
How can courses help students meaningfully connect what they are learning with communities and contexts around them? The Fall 2026 ELF cohort invites faculty to take up this question in a small, collaborative cohort focused on community-engaged teaching and learning.
About this cohort
The Fall 2026 ELF cohort focuses on courses that bring together:
- Community partnerships and public engagement
- High-impact experiential learning
- Career-connected learning and student skill development
Community-engaged teaching can take many forms: shared projects with a community partner, individual placements with different community partners, or a mix of the two. This cohort is designed to support that range of approaches.
Who should apply to the program
We welcome full-time faculty across disciplines, roles, and experience levels, including those who are:
- Beginning to explore community engagement in teaching, or looking to strengthen existing practices;
- Leading project- or placement-based courses; and
- Thinking about how to scale or connect engagement across courses or programs.
We explicitly seek faculty with different types of expertise to create opportunities to learn from one another.
How the program works
The program will run September – December 2026 and include the following activities:
- An in-person kickoff session in early September
- Three monthly 90-minutes Zoom sessions (October, November, December)
- Short readings and light design activities between sessions
The cohort is intentionally small (8-10 faculty) and conversational. The focus is on shared inquiry, feedback, and iteration, rather than formal training.
What participants do during the program
Faculty will use the cohort experience as a working space to focus on a course they plan to teach. Over the semester, they will:
- Design or refine a course that includes a substantial community-engaged component
- Clarify how engagement connects to course concepts and learning goals
- Build or deepen relationships with community partners
- Develop ways for students to reflect on and articulate their growth in skills and career readiness
Throughout, participants will explore the elements that make community-engaged learning high-impact, such as sustained engagement, structured reflection, mentorship, and public-facing work.
What participants develop during the program
By the end of the semester, participants will develop:
- A new or substantially revised syllabus
- A clearer approach to integrating:
- Community partnership
- Experiential structure (preparation → engagement → reflection)
- Career-connected learning
- A plan for assessing student learning in experiential learning and community engagement
- A way to share their work with colleagues (e.g., department, panel, or campus setting)
What participants bring to the program
- A course (existing or planned) that includes community engagement
- Willingness to reflect and revise
- Interest in contributing to a collaborative environment
How participants benefit as fellows
- A collegial, cross-disciplinary cohort experience
- Structured support for course design and refinement
- Opportunities to share work with peers across campus
- Research and professional development funds of $2,500
Learn more
We will offer two virtual info sessions to discuss more details and answer questions:
- July 30, 2pm – click here to register
- August 4, 1pm – click here to register
How to apply
The application features a short set of questions about:
- Your experience with community-engaged teaching
- The course you want to design or redesign
- Areas where you are looking to grow
- What you hope to gain from the cohort
Questions
Contact Chuck Keeton, Vice Provost for Experiential Learning, at keeton@rutgers.edu