It's not easy to embrace a new approach to teaching. Yet over the past four years, 25 City College professors have scrutinized their curriculum, jettisoned weak or outdated elements, and retooled their lessons to include hands-on service opportunities that reinforce learning objectives. These professors, representing the range of CCNY academic departments, are all Powell Center service learning faculty fellows.

Each year, the Colin Powell Center awards five to 10 fellowships of $2,000 each to faculty members who choose to integrate service learning into one or more of their courses. Service learning is an innovative pedagogy that incorporates service projects into the curriculum to enrich the academic content and maintain academic rigor. Powell Center Advisory Board Member Fulvio Dobrich established the Center’s faculty fellowship program in 2005 with a $200,000 grant.

Since then, the Center has awarded 25 faculty fellowships. Along with financial support, fellows pass through a one semester workshop training program developed by Powell Center staff, and thereafter receive one-to-one technical assistance. The workshops enable faculty fellows to incorporate service elements seamlessly into existing course work. Additionally, faculty fellows can obtain an additional $1,000 to cover related course expenses, and, if they repeat the course in its new, service learning format, another $750 to pay for a student course assistant. Student course assistants have themselves taken the same service learning course, and have been enthusiastic advocates of the approach. More >