The mission of the Centre for Community Partnerships (CCP) is to strengthen, through community engagement, a culture of learning and development that fosters global citizenship and leads to socially conscious practice. We aim to build faculty capacity for research and teaching that strengthens both student learning and local communities. We currently support undergraduate and graduate service-learning courses across disciplines on all three campuses. The following are resources and services that we offer to support service-learning course development:
Resources
Access to our library of books, journals, manuals, as well as our network of national and international associations and clearinghouses.
Faculty Development
An annual two-day Faculty Summer Institute on Service-Learning, regularly scheduled dialogues and brown-bag sessions for knowledge development, sharing and mentoring among faculty.
Community Connections
Access to our network of community partners in the not-for-profit, voluntary sector, school boards, and governments in the GTA and Peel Region. We help to broker relationships and to work with you and the community partners to create mutually beneficial learning outcomes.
Structure Syllabi
Consult with you to develop or modify your course syllabus by infusing community service and other critical service-learning components, and research for your existing practices and courses across institutions and disciplines.
Promotion
Publicizing your course to students by way of the University Portal, the CCP website, listservs, newsletters and posters.
Training
Develop community partners’ knowledge and skills to work effectively with students as learners (as opposed to students as volunteers) and train students to work effectively with diverse communities.
Critical Reflection Tools
Provide you with reflection resources and specific examples of activities, exercises, and assignments that you can implement so that your students make deeper meaning of their experiences.
Ethics & Standards
Liaise between you and the Ethical Research Office to negotiate process and procedures to ensure ethically sound student work in the community.
Learning Contracts
Help establish learning contracts that meet the needs of the community partner and the students learning outcomes for the course.
Risk Management
Advise and counsel you on risk, safety, and liability and help to ensure that you, the students, and the community partners have a successful service-learning experience.
