Civic and Community Engagement

Civic and Community Engagement Minor
The intercollege minor in Civic and Community Engagement provides an opportunity for students to extend their education beyond the classroom through engagement in socially meaningful public scholarship in both pre-existing and newly developing community projects. This minor entails situated as well as experiential learning. Students apply, test, analyze, and re-formulate academic material in the context of public problems and community settings. Engaging in “learning-by-doing” allows students to communicate across differences, deliberate public problems, fulfill civic responsibilities, gain insight into personal values and worldviews, develop civic skills including observation and listening, and further develop career interests and professional goals.
Degree Types: Minor

About the Program

You might like this program if…

  • The intercollege minor in Civic and Community Engagement (CIVCM) is appropriate for undergraduate students seeking to apply domains of knowledge from their majors or general education programs to issues of consequence beyond the classroom.

Coursework

  • Foundations of Civic and Community Engagement
  • Public Issues and Democracy
  • Public Scholarship
  • Communication
  • Supervised Field Experience

Have questions about this program?

Future students, contact Chantel Harley.

Current students, contact your academic adviser

This program is housed in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences
 at Penn State University Park.
Future Students
CURRENT Students
Graduate Students
Get Funding

Rock Ethics Institute research associate Yael Warshel is poised to receive a book award at the International Communication Association’s annual meeting for her pioneering work in the book “Experiencing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Children, Peace Communication, and Socialization.” Her book, a critical examination of peace communication interventions and their effects on children in conflict zones, has received international acclaim, with this being the book’s second major accolade.

Penn State University Libraries’ Open Publishing program recently launched a new Open Access monograph. “The Future of Foster Care: New Science on Old Problems,” edited by Yo Jackson and Sarah Font, is a collection of expanded conference proceedings from the 2019 conference of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network, a national leader in research designed to influence public policy that better protects vulnerable children from abuse.

P. Gabrielle Foreman, Paterno Family Professor of American Literature and professor of African American studies and history at Penn State and a 2023 MacArthur Fellow, embarked on a decade-long creative endeavor that culminated in her recently released edited volume, “Praise Songs for Dave the Potter: Art and Poetry for David Drake.”

WPSU uncovers the stories that unveil the triumph, grit, caution and legend that make up the history of the commonwealth in a new digital series titled “Past PA.”

Janet van Hell, a longtime Penn State faculty member in the College of the Liberal Arts’ Department of Psychology and director of the Center for Language Science, was recently promoted to distinguished professor of psychology and linguistics.

Liberal Arts Professor of English and Asian Studies Xiaoye You’s new book on rhetoric in early imperial China offers insights into how ancient rulers built and maintained an empire, and what that may reveal about contemporary issues.

Nearly 100 Centre County high school students visited Penn State’s University Park campus on April 12 to participate in the fourth annual Language and Linguistics Day hosted by Penn State’s Center for Language Science.

The Penn State Consortium on Substance Use and Addiction recently hosted its fourth annual conference in the HUB-Robeson Center at the University Park campus. 

An interdisciplinary team of Penn State researchers have received a $442,750 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, to support a multi-faceted, three-part study that observes how gay and bisexual men search and find HIV prevention information — specifically information about pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medicine that when taken as prescribed, is very effective at preventing HIV.

Two Penn State professors — one in history and the other in art history and anthropology — have collaborated on a three-pronged project that will spark conversation and awe about the art, culture, science and history of Andean peoples.