Community Engaged Leadership Minor
The minor in community engaged leadership (CEL) is an interdisciplinary minor that equips students with the skills to analyze and understand significant problems facing our communities, explore their relationship to these problems, imagine how to transform these problems, and do
meaningful work to improve our communities through a project co-designed with an off- campus partner. The minor provides an overview of how students can ethically and effectively partner with community-based organizations, orients students with theories of how change happens, introduces them to best practices for partnership, and culminates in a capstone project in collaboration with an off-campus community-based organization.
Core Competencies
Students will make progress through the minor program in these areas of core competency, learning how to engage effectively and ethically with communities beyond the campus in preparation for a life of community engaged leadership.
Civic Literacy – students will better understand the institutions, structures, ideas, and practices that make up the frameworks for shared life in society.
Civic Agency – students will gain an understanding of how to act in effective ways to influence and transform the institutions, structures, ideas, and practices that constitute shared life to improve equity and justice.
Civic Imagination – students will develop the ability to envision and articulate structures, ideas, and practices to create a shared life grounded in equity and justice.
Program Requirements
The community engaged leadership minor is an interdisciplinary minor consisting of 19 credit hours. Core course include:
CEL 210 Introduction to Community Engaged Leadership 4 credit hours
CEL 310 Community Engaged Leadership Capstone 3 credit hours
Beyond the core courses, students must take an additional 12 hours of qualifying courses approved by the minor’s governing body comprised of representatives from each school and college. A minimum grade of C is required for all courses within the minor.
Current qualifying courses approved by the minor’s governing body include:
BUS 101 Business for a Better World
BUS 300 Business Internship
CLC 360 Archaeological and Museum Ethics
CJ 285 Foundations of Terrorism
CJ 325 Emergency Management in Criminal Justice
COUN 301 Multicultural Issues in Helping Professions
EDCI 320 Service Projects in Science Ed: K-12
ENGR 598 Sustainability for Engineering & Science
JOUR 368 Peace Journalism
JOUR 513 The Press & The South
MGMT 391 Organizational Behavior
MGMT 495 Leadership and Group Dynamics
NHM 215 Intro to Hospitality Management
NHM 268 Culture, Cuisine, & Global Citizenship
NHM 522 Nutrition Policy
PH 528 Public Health Policy
PHIL 102 Introduction to Professional Ethics
SRA 262 Introduction to Therapeutic Recreation
SST 101 Introduction to Southern Studies
SST 106 Introduction to Southern Documentary
SST 109 Rights and Southern Activism
SST 560 Oral History of Southern Social Movement
Writ 345 Community Writing
Writ 410 Grant Writing
Faculty interested in their course being included can complete the qualifying course submission form for the minor’s governing body to review.
Students can request additional qualifying courses to be reviewed and approved by the minor’s governing body.