In Spring 2023 all three of Bucknell University’s curriculum committees approved a new minor in Community Engaged Leadership to be offered in the AY 2024-5.

Rationale

The Plan for Bucknell 2025 envisions a Bucknell that “prepares students for successful and engaged lives while readying them to serve the common good, promote justice and improve the world around them.” The Community Engaged Leadership minor proposed here is situated at the heart of this vision and will contribute directly to the following priorities of The Plan for Bucknell 2025:

• Bucknell will identify and strengthen academic programs and activities that contribute to transformative learning.
• Bucknell will continue to develop and deliver academic programs that build upon the intersections between departments and among the three colleges while ensuring the independent disciplinary strengths of the individual academic units that form the core of the University.
• Bucknell will implement and assess exemplary academic advising,
  broad-based intentional mentoring, and other student-centered policies and programs to support student achievement, success and development as measured by quantitative and qualitative data.
• Bucknell will foster a campus environment that recognizes the impact of power and privilege while addressing historical and emerging barriers to equity and inclusion.
• Bucknell will provide all students, faculty and staff with the structures and programs to thrive in a diverse world.
• Bucknell will identify and invest in programs that promote academic and cultural engagement throughout the entire student experience.
• Bucknell will prepare students for informed and engaged citizenship, from the local to the global; implement additional leadership development programs; and offer intentional, structured learning opportunities afforded by the University’s location in the Susquehanna River Valley.
  
  The Community Engaged Leadership minor will help actualize the Plan for Bucknell’s initiative to “expand its interdisciplinary academic programs between and among academic units (e.g., colleges, departments/programs, centers and institutes), including those that meet the standard for inclusion on a student’s academic record.” The proposed Community Engaged Leadership minor has been developed as the result of an action item in The Engaged Bucknell Civic Action Plan, and The Engaged Bucknell Civic Action Plan is itself an initiative of the Plan for Bucknell 2025.
  
  The Community Engaged Leadership minor will help position Bucknell as a leader in answering questions of relevance and value-proposition among its peers in the field of liberal arts-centered higher education, especially those in rural settings. Based on current student feedback, such a program will prove attractive to the kinds of students Bucknell aims to enroll and develop in the coming years by collaborating across all three Colleges and their community-engaged courses.

Program Description and Requirements

The Community Engaged Leadership minor offers students the opportunity to benefit from Bucknell’s liberal arts environment, as well as a strong culture of community, civic engagement and leadership programs, both curricular and co-curricular. This program will encourage students to engage in coursework and other experiences that cultivate community engagement competencies, both knowledge and skills, and recognize the students that do so, enhancing their prospects for graduate study and employment. In the context of this minor, leadership is defined as collaborative, consensus- and empathy-based team building for social change.

Completion of the program will enrich students’ understanding of their respective majors and other minors and prove useful to careers or graduate studies in a variety of fields including public policy, advocacy, media, social and cultural analysis, and careers in both domestic and international organizations. Students who satisfy the requirements will have “Community Engaged Leadership Minor” added to their transcript.

The Community-Engaged Leadership minor will integrate diverse programs to introduce all students to campus-wide, engaged leadership opportunities, and a diverse array of existing academic minors and engaged scholarship courses.

Student Perspective

“The Community Engaged Leadership minor is an excellent opportunity to combine classroom learning with leadership experience that most students are already doing, rewarding this co-curricular work and excellence while also giving students skills, experience, and knowledge to become better, more engaged leaders. As a student leader involved in a few different organizations, one thing I am always thinking about is how I can better integrate community engagement into those groups to make a more meaningful impact and leverage the resources we already have for the benefit of both my group members and members of the broader community. Being involved in community engagement at Bucknell so far has taught me incredible personal skills including communication, public speaking, active listening, teamwork, and collaboration, in addition to giving me better problem-solving, critical thinking, and organization abilities. This learning will only be enhanced when it is simultaneously taking place in more intentional, more cohesive academic settings. I have already started telling people I am going to minor in Community Engaged Leadership, and I am so eager for the minor to be included in the catalogue and to have other peers pursuing the same curricular and co-curricular experience with me!” – Dora Kreitzer

Courses and Expectations:

The requirements are 3 courses plus the equivalent of 2 courses of community engagement as follows:

1. One foundational course (UNIV 190 Community Engaged Leadership AND UNIV 191 Community Engaged Practice). This interdisciplinary approach to community-engaged leadership will be taught in a mode similar to IP courses, in which multiple guest lecturers will introduce students to a broad array of engaged leadership possibilities. Students will have the opportunity to survey engaged leadership theory to identify that which aligns most closely to their personal vision and mission statements. Introductory topics include developing a sense of self-awareness, completing a personal inventory to include: implicit bias, active listening skills, constructive communication, public speaking, ethics, negotiating conflict, power and privilege, and time management. Students will also be introduced to the layered challenges that poverty presents to various communities, as well as benchmarks used to track progress that include the Social Determinants of Health model and the UN Sustainable Development goals.

Two further courses beyond the core that must be taken in two different colleges or be taught in a cross-disciplinary manner, ie. UNIV courses. A list of approved courses is available from the Community Engaged Leadership Minor advisor. No more than one of these courses may be 100-level and should focus on two or more of the following areas:
Diversity Equity & Inclusion
Professional or Social Ethics
Organizational Principles and Practices
Confounding Problems

2. Students must complete at least 260 hours of co-curricular and/or experiential programs (this is the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s standard equivalent to 2 course credits for community engagement). 
3. Submission and presentation to the Community Engaged Leadership Minor Coordinating Committee of a reflective Impact Statement by the beginning of the final semester of the student’s graduation year for formal approval. This reflection is the product of regular meetings with the minor advisor and sustained reflection on curricular and co-curricular activities, as recorded in the Pathways platform. 

Learning Goals — civic knowledge, skills, disposition, engaged practice experience

Students or faculty instructors can request that relevant courses be included in the program by obtaining approval from the Coordinating Committee of the Program. Students may be able to count an internship or field work related to community-engaged leadership in the form of an independent study course, if approved by the Community Engaged Leadership Minor Coordinating Committee. Students may request that global education courses be considered for the program; the Coordinating Committee will consider such courses upon review of the syllabus consultation with a member of the Global Education department.

Administration of Program: The Community Engaged Leadership Minor Coordinating Committee will consist of:

1. The Director of the Center of Community Engaged Leadership, Learning & Reserach or their designate
2. The Associate Director of Community-Based & Engaged Learning
3. The Faculty Director for Academic Community Engagement
4. Two members of the Engaged Bucknell Coordinating Council, one staff person from the Division of Student Affairs and one faculty member
5. One additional instructor who teaches Community-Engaged Learning designated course(s)