CESP Blog

The Integrative Community Engagement Project (ICEP) is the capstone experience for the Community Engagement Scholars Program, and a great chance to use your past community work and academic experiences to meet a need or build capacity within a community organization. In this workshop, we heard from alumni of the Scholars Program about how they developed and implemented their ICEPs. We also participated in activities meant to begin the brainstorming/planning process for your ICEP

From Laura:
Thanks for a great workshop last week. Here is a question for reflection:

What do you think it means to "meet a need" or "build capacity" at your community organization? How will you know that your ICEP plan does this?

To get credit for this RAP Session please make sure you respond to this question in a comment on this entry or shoot Laura an email at damm0032@umn.edu.

If commenting, please put your full name and umn.edu email address so we know who to give credit to!

Posted by reut0076 at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

From Mitch:

Thanks again for a great conversation and discussion. We put together some insightful and provocative ideas about how reflection works and how we accomplish reflective writing. I came away with several new ideas and a lot to think about. Monica's facebook status after the session was right on: "Monica is reflecting on reflection. It's all about the meta."

We did spend most of the time together talking about reflection for reflection's sake -- or as its own outcome, purpose, or assignment. We didn't have much chance to discuss how reflection and reflective writing can support and extend other kinds of thinking and writing -- how it can move other projects forward. So please respond to the following questions:

What are some specific larger projects or goals that you have before you (e.g. writing a capstone paper, writing a proposal, teaching or training on a certain topic, applying for a career-track job, etc.)?

How can you imagine reflective writing being a productive part of your process towards those larger projects?

How might you structure your reflective writing in these projects -- which might not require reflective writing at all, leaving your use of reflective writing entirely up to you? How will you design your reflective writing assignments for yourself?

To get credit for this RAP Session please make sure you leave us a summary with how it went, what you learned, etc in a comment on this entry or shoot Laura an email at damm0032@umn.edu.

If commenting, please put your full name and umn.edu email address so we know who to give credit to!

Hope you all enjoyed the RAP session and come to some more, the next is Grants and Other Fundraising Tools on Thursday, April 2nd from 3-5pm at Akerman Hall 225. Sign up at www.servicelearning.umn.edu/trainings!

Posted by reut0076 at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In our session we talked about space beyond physical geography and place as it relates to comfort zones. We used maps of the U of M campus and the Twin Cities as concrete examples of how we feel comfortable in some spaces and not others. Some of the things discussed were memory, familiarity, routine, people, etc.

For your comment, we ask you to consider the idea of "universal" space introduced by the excerpt from Freedom Dreams by Robin D. G. Kelley (Hannah says it's a great book, especially if you're interested in surrealism). We would like you to contemplate the proposals/ideas of Kelley and how they can be applied to your community work, or community work in general.

Would you consider the place you do community work a "universal" space? Explain. Consider the ideas of absolute, relative, relational, four dimensional, historical, imaginative space that we discussed. Also think about potential spatial acts - what would you do to make this space more comfortable for everyone?

Click "continue reading" to see pictures of the whiteboard to help you remember the terms discussed, the maps created, and everything else that ended up on the board!

To get credit for this RAP Session please make sure you leave us a comment on this entry or shoot Laura an email at damm0032@umn.edu.

If commenting, please put your full name and umn.edu email address so we know who to give credit to!

Hope you all enjoyed the RAP session and come to some more, the next is a Reflective Writing Workshop on Tuesday, March 10th from 2-4pm at Physics (Tate) 236A. Sign up at www.servicelearning.umn.edu/trainings!

Posted by reut0076 at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)