Funding Initiative: Community Engaged Learning

Students working in Ceiba, Puerto Rico with APRODEC, wearing hardhats

The Center for Community Engaged Learning brings students together with the University’s partner organizations, in New York and abroad, for learning experiences that transform their understanding of issues of justice and community development.

Courses that have a community engaged learning component increased more than sevenfold, to 52, in the five years ending in spring 2021. Our goal is to keep expanding these courses so that every student has a chance to take at least one. Your gift to the center can help meet this goal by supporting the following and more:

Stipends for co-educators who support our courses
Workshops, tutoring, and programming with community partners
Stipends for faculty members who develop courses
Professional development and events for faculty
Course materials and transportation
Research by faculty and students
Academic and preprofessional workshops and events for students

Give Now to Support Community Engaged Learning

Interested in endowing funds, naming opportunities, or have other questions? Please contact Michael Boyd, senior associate vice president of development and university relations, at 212-636-6525 or mboyd7@fordham.edu.

Community Engaged Learning at Fordham

Undocumented High Schoolers Intern at Fordham through Beyond Rising Program

This summer, Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) will help reprise and expand the youth program Beyond Rising, which it runs with Oyate Group, a community partner. The program offers paid internships to undocumented immigrant high school students who live in the community around the university. The program is designed to fill in a …

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Living the Ignatian Mission at Fordham, One Program at a Time

In more than 20 years at Fordham, Robert Parmach, Ph.D., has worked to incorporate Jesuit values, teachings, and practices in all of his roles, which have included first-year class dean, professor, leader of the Manresa program, and GO! leader. In his new role as the inaugural director of Ignatian mission initiatives in the office of …

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In New Class, Addressing Climate Change and Food Insecurity

We hear regularly about how climate change is impacting the weather. What’s perhaps less obvious is that it is also affecting the food we eat. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture warned in a report that the progress that has been made on global food security is likely to take a hit because of …

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Immigrant Advocate Shares Challenges of Helping Influx of Asylum Seekers

In late April, Murad Awawdeh, PCS’19, knew something was wrong. It was around then that the New York Immigration Coalition, where he is executive director, started to receive notices in the mail for unknown people who were due to appear before court. “The notice would say, “Hey, your immigration court date is X day, at …

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Alumni ‘GO!’ to Puerto Rico for Summertime Service Project

Fordham’s Global Outreach program (GO!), which runs projects centered on social justice and community engagement in the U.S. and abroad, isn’t just for students. In early August, a group of seven alumni traveled to Puerto Rico to support the nonprofit Alliance for Economic Development of Ceiba (APRODEC) in its efforts to turn a former U.S. naval station …

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Fordham Launches New Effort to Connect with Bronx Partners

Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning has become a hub for several well-established (and a few new) Bronx-based relationships the University has fostered over the years. On Friday, May 6, the center took that effort a step further at a day-long summit at the Bronx Zoo, formally launching a new consortium between Fordham, local government, …

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With Donor Support, Community Engaged Learning Courses Expand

In a marketing class, students learned about food that was going to waste at a large market in the Bronx and how they might help address it. In a music class, students learned about world music and dance from Bronx performers who also educated them about cultures from Cuba, West Africa, and elsewhere. And, in …

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Students in HEOP Take Part in Global Outreach, With Help from President’s Council Members

Over spring break, New York City native Raffy Grullon, FCRH ’22, took his first-ever trip to another state—one that felt “like a different country entirely,” he said. The state was North Carolina, and many of the people he met there were immigrants who had suffered greatly before coming to work at the cooperatives that he …

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From Ethiopia to the Bronx to Mississippi, Students Work Within Their Communities

Two graduating students have made community-engaged learning their priority in the Bronx and beyond: Ellie Bauer, GSAS ’22, a graduate student from Minnesota who recently accepted a job in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Benjamin Medeiros, FCRH ’22, a Rhode Island native who will return to Fordham this fall to pursue his Ph.D. at …

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Fordham Teams Up with New York Giants, Local Partners to Help Families Impacted by Bronx Fire

“A ray of sunshine.” That was how Chanasia Hunter described a supply and resource distribution event on Feb. 8, organized by Fordham University, Monroe College, and their partners—the New York Giants, BronxWorks, the Bronx Zoo, and others. Hunter and her family were impacted by the devastating Bronx fire that ravaged an East 181st Street apartment …

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In New Campus Center, a Beacon with Amenities Aplenty

At 85 acres, Fordham’s Rose Hill campus is blessed with space. But when the 71,000-square-foot, four-story addition to the McGinley Center officially opens today, Feb. 1, it will introduce to the Fordham community a radically different sort of space, filled with places to relax, recharge, and connect. Get Your Sweat On One of the highlights …

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