Spencer Foundation and ACM Community-Based Learning Grant Awards

Award Date: June 2024

Total Funding: Nearly $30,000

Geographic Scope: ACM member colleges

Focus Areas:

• Community-based learning initiatives
• High-impact educational practices
• Student-community partnership development
• Experiential learning
• Service-learning coursework
• Vocational reflection and engagement with off-campus partners

Award Recipients and Projects

1. Coe College - Prison Learning Initiative Extension

• Award: $6,400
• Focus: Cross-disciplinary initiative providing hands-on exposure to students and community members
• Activities: Reentry simulation, book distribution to correctional facilities, discussions and performances
• Goal: Create spaces for learning about building communities supporting people after incarceration
• Service area: Greater Cedar Rapids area

2. Lake Forest College - Serve to Learn

• Award: $5,500
• Focus: Partnership providing internships for primarily first-generation students at courthouse in Waukegan, Illinois
• Activities: Students apply language skills and legal system knowledge to assist Latinx community members navigating courthouse
• Development: New approaches to Community Based Learning class (prerequisite for internships)
• Impact: Hundreds of clients assisted; confidence-building for students
• Target: Historically underserved, lower-income minority populations

3. Macalester College

• Award: $6,000
• Focus: Supporting faculty in forging relationships with community organizations
• Location: Saint Paul, Minnesota
• Goal: Develop approaches to experiential teaching

4. Beloit College

• Award: $6,000
• Focus: Community Connections Courses
• Activities: Partnerships with local nonprofits (e.g., Spanish students as reading buddies to dual-language elementary students; English students programming LGBTQ+ films)

5. St. Olaf College and Luther College - Collaborative

• Focus: Developing seminars embracing vocational reflection
• Activity: Further engagement with off-campus partners
• Additional: Faculty developing evidence-supported ways to assess student success in community-centered learning; results to be shared with 14 ACM members

High-Impact Practices Framework

• Research-supported educational approaches
• Student outcomes: improved educational achievement, better connection to academic learning
• Employer-valued skills: teamwork, critical thinking, communication
• Citizenship preparation and life skills development

Connection to Previous Funding

• Extensions of work previously funded through Institutionalizing Community-Based Pedagogies program (Arthur Vining Davis Foundations)
• Builds on established community partnerships and initiatives