Community Engagement at Drake has been nationally and locally recognized by the Carnegie Foundation’s Community Engagement Classification, the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, and the United Way of Central Iowa Volunteer Award. Read more about the impact of our programs in our updated Community Engaged Learning Impact Report. Highlights from 2017–2018 include:

Tracking Community Engaged Learning:

• Refining standards and identification process for tagging courses with a Community Engaged Learning (CEL) attribute.
• Identifying where CEL happens in each of the colleges; 33 percent of academic programs integrate at least one CEL experience in the curriculum. An audit with CPBA revealed 62 percent of all CBPA undergraduates will take a CEL course before they graduate.

Building a signature service year program:
Eight students successfully completed 300 hours of service as a result of participating in the Engaged Citizen Corps program, which resulted in $66,663 monetary value contributed to communities.

Faculty development:
Laura Kieran, assistant professor of special education, and Sally Haack, associate professor of pharmacy practice, have been accepted for national publication and presentation. Their manuscript, PRELOAD: A Rubric to Evaluate Course Syllabi for Quality Indicators of Community Engagement and Service-Learning Components, will be published in the Journal of Community Engagement & Higher Education and presented at the International Association for Research on Community Engagement & Service-Learning this summer.

Co-Curricular Service:
Launching an inaugural Paul Morrison Service Week that resulted in over 400 hours of community service.

— Renee Sedlacek, Community Engaged Learning