Workshops & Events for Faculty & Staff

Please note that all workshops require advanced registration

Framing & Facilitating High Stakes Discussions: Post-Election Edition

Thursday January 16, 2025 10am-12pm (In Person) - REGISTER HERE

Do you plan to engage your students in classroom discussions about the 2024 election or current political issues? How can you design and facilitate conversations in the classroom that might involved difficult classroom dynamics, controversy, or big emotions? In this session for instructors, participants will learn about a framework for designing high stakes discussions and will begin to create or refine a plan for their own course. Through individual work and peer feedback, you'll identify discussion goals, tone-setting strategies, participation guidelines and activities that can help you facilitate these discussions well. Participants are encouraged to bring ideas for a specific lesson or topic that they want to create a plan for. 

• This session is offered as a part of the Promoting Democracy Teaching Series by CRLT & Ginsberg Center.
• Open to UM faculty, graduate students/GSIs, and post-docs. If you are UM staff with instructional responsibilities who would like to register, please reach out to [email protected]

Teaching in Tumultuous Times: Post Election Edition

Thursday January 30, 2024 10am-12pm (In Person) - REGISTER HERE

We continue to live in unprecedented times with heightened anxiety and stress in regards to many issues: the crisis in the Middle East and concurrent debates about antisemitism and Islamophobia/anti-Palestinian politics on college campuses, continued anti-Black policies & systemic racism, anti-queer and anti-trans policies, financial crises, the ongoing challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, and a contentious political climate as we enter the tail end of the 2024 electoral season, among others. Students report feeling alienated, or confused, when instructors in their courses do not acknowledge such unsettling events, locally, nationally, and globally. As instructors, we make decisions whether, when, and how, to address such events with our students. This interactive in-person workshop provides an opportunity for instructors to think together and work through strategies for engaging with students in the classroom about emerging events on campus and beyond. 

• This session is offered as a part of the Promoting Democracy Teaching Series by CRLT & Ginsberg Center.
• Open to UM faculty, graduate students/GSIs, and post-docs. If you are UM staff with instructional responsibilities who would like to register, please reach out to [email protected]

Power & Partnerships in Community Engagement

Tuesday February 11, 2025 12pm-1:30pm (Zoom) - REGISTER HERE

Developing equitable and mutually beneficial partnerships with community members and organizations requires taking a critical look at how power operates in university-community partnerships. This interactive workshop will introduce participants to key principles of equity-focused community engagement and discuss how relationships of power shape university-community partnerships for research and student learning. We’ll consider how power operates in such areas as: the structure and terms of partnership agreements, participation dynamics in university-community projects, and funding/compensation. Participants will generate strategies for re-shaping inequitable power dynamics, share insights with colleagues, and identify ways to apply key principles to their own community-engaged work. 

• This session is designed especially for participants who are involved in (or interested in) community-engaged research, teaching & learning, project/program administration, and/or campus initiatives at Michigan. 
• Open to faculty, staff, admin, and post-docs. Graduate students who are interested in attending can email [email protected] for more information. This session is not open to undergraduate students. to UM faculty, graduate students/GSIs, and post-docs. 

Classroom Activities for Engaging with Politics, Policy, & Social Issues

Thursday February 20, 2025 12pm-1:30pm (In Person) - REGISTER HERE

Across the disciplines, we can help our students to build skills for civic and democratic engagement that will serve them throughout their careers and lives. This role can be challenging, however, particularly in politically polarized times. Our goal for this in-person, interactive workshop is to strengthen instructors’ toolkits for incorporating civic skills-building in the classroom and discipline. We’ll explore specific classroom activities for class sessions discussing policy, politics, and social issues, such as deliberative dialogue discussions and conversation cafes. We’ll focus on how to select and design activities well-suited for the specific skills we are seeking to foster during a class period. 

• This session is offered as a part of the Promoting Democracy Teaching Series by CRLT & Ginsberg Center.
• Open to UM faculty, graduate students/GSIs, and post-docs. If you are UM staff with instructional responsibilities who would like to register, please reach out to [email protected]

Compensating & Recognizing Community Partners: Guidance for Faculty, Researchers & Administrators at R1 Universities

Friday February 21, 2025 10am-11:30am (Zoom) - REGISTER HERE

Sponsored by Ginsberg Center, Detroit URC, OVPR PE+RI, and Office of the Associate Dean for Research, Michigan Engineering 

Community partners make incredible contributions to research and student learning at U-M through their involvement in research projects, course assignments, clinical experiences, advisory boards, student internships, guest speaking, and more. While compensation for community partners is a foundation of ethical community-engagement practice, the complex administrative and financial systems of R1 universities are not designed to easily facilitate such compensation.

Join us for an extraordinary panel of community engagement professionals from TRUCEN to share findings from their national survey of R1 universities on the challenges associated with compensating community partners who contribute to community engagement initiatives. 

In this session, members of the TRUCEN Sustained Conversation Group on Cultivating Community Voice will discuss principles and philosophy for compensating partners that advocates can use in conversations with your colleagues in procurement, finance, HR, fundraising, and senior leadership. Our goal will be for attendees to consider how these principles and practices intersect with the University of Michigan’s institutional context, and begin to identify next steps to simplify processes, and reduce delays, for compensating your community partners. The workshop will preview content being developed for a toolkit which will provide community engagement professionals and faculty members with 1) talking points to make a case for compensating community partners and 2) examples of promising processes and practices used by campuses across the country.

Featuring: 

• Douglas Barrera - Associate Director for Faculty and Community Engagement, UCLA Center for Community Engagement, UCLA
• Laurel Hirt - Director of the Center for Community-Engaged Learning, University of Minnesota
• Mindi Levin - Founder and Director of SOURCE, the community engagement and service-learning center of Johns Hopkins University Schools of Public Health, Nursing, and Medicine.
• Rian Satterwhite - Director for Service Learning & Leadership, UNLV
• Michelle Snitgen - Assistant Director, Academic Programs, Center for Community Engaged Learning, Michigan State University
• Chan Williams - Assistant Director for Academics and Operations, MDP Program & Paul D. Coverdell Fellowship Program Coordinator, Emory University

• Open to faculty, staff/admin, post-docs & graduate students. This session is not open to undergraduate students. 

Getting Started in Community Engaged Research

Tuesday March 18, 2025 1pm-2:30pm (Zoom) - REGISTER HERE

• Community-engaged research is a valuable, high impact methodology that can contribute to the University of Michigan’s mission of developing new academic knowledge while advancing the public good. Community-engaged research encompasses a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, but what this body of work shares is substantive involvement of community partners in creating, translating, and disseminating knowledge that strengthens the well-being of communities and broader society.  Ginsberg Center’s Getting Started with Community-Engaged Research will introduce you to definitions, spectrums, and some frameworks of community-engaged research, including examples from multiple disciplines. Participants will consider how to apply these workshop concepts to their own research, and leave the workshop with tools to begin to approach this work ethically and equitably.

• This session is designed especially for participants who are new to or interested in community-engaged research at Michigan. 
• Open to faculty, staff, admin, and post-docs. Graduate students who are interested in attending can email [email protected] for more information. This session is not open to undergraduate students. 

Join us for upcoming speakers and events with community partners, community-engaged scholars, and Ginsberg's institutional partners here at U-M.

Fall 2024

Welcome to Washtenaw: Building Your Understanding of our Local Community Context

Tuesday September 10, 2024 1pm-2:30pm 

• Interested in doing community-engaged research, teaching, or projects with a local community partner here in Washtenaw County? With a network of over 300 community partners across Washtenaw County and Southeast Michigan, the Edward Ginsberg Center works to connect local communities with U-M courses, researchers, internships and other community-engaged initiatives. In this session, Ginsberg Center staff will introduce key issues facing the community and how these show up in the priorities partners share with Ginsberg. The workshop will also include examples of U-M research, courses, and projects that have been designed to respond to those priorities. Whether you’re new to Michigan or looking for a new community partner, join us for this important orientation to community engagement in Washtenaw County!

Framing & Facilitating High Stakes Discussions: Election Edition

Tuesday September 24, 2024 10am-12pm 

Monday October 21, 2024 10am-12pm 

• Do you plan to engage your students in classroom discussions about the 2024 elections ot current political issues? How can you design and facilitate conversations in the classroom that might involved difficult classroom dynamics, controversy, or big emotions? In this session for instructors, participants will learn about a framework for designing high stakes discussions and will begin to create or refine a plan for their own course. Through individual work and peer feedback, you'll identify discussion goals, tone-setting strategies, participation guidelines and activities that can help you facilitate these discussions well. Participants are encouraged to bring ideas for a specific lesson or topic that they want to create a plan for. 
• This session is offered as a part of the Promoting Democracy Teaching Series by CRLT & Ginsberg Center.

Connecting Your Course to the 2024 Election

Thursday September 26, 2024 1pm-2:30pm 

• The 2024 Presidential Election is fast approaching and students and faculty alike will be highly impacted by both election rhetoric and election outcomes. Moreover, U-M instructors are in a unique position to support our students as new voters during this time. Connecting your course and discipline to the election and issues at stake in the election is a valuable way to approach this topic for a number of reasons. In this workshop, participants will explore specific, cross-disciplinary examples of classroom activities and assignments that build connections to the issues raised by this election into courses. Participants will have the opportunity to engage with resources and brainstorm strategies for promoting democracy in and beyond their own classrooms. 
• This session is offered as a part of the Promoting Democracy Teaching Series by CRLT & Ginsberg Center.

Making the Most of 'Hot Moments': Election Edition

Friday September 20, 2024 12pm-2pm

Friday November 8, 2024 10am-12pm

• Teaching and learning centers use the term 'hot moments' to describe a sudden eruption of tension, conflict, or big emotion during class, often connected to a heightened awareness of the social differences in the room. Election seasons can generate 'hot moments' in every discipline, whether your courses frequently raise potentially sensitive subjects or never do so deliberately. How can you navigate those interactions in ways that are responsive to students and also advance course learning goals? In this interactive workshop for instructors in all academic disciplines, participants will reflect on their own experiences of 'hot moments', consider a range of pedagogical choices, and practice language for responding to hot moemnts in the classroom. 
• This session is offered as a part of the Promoting Democracy Teaching Series by CRLT & Ginsberg Center.

Teaching in Tumultuous Times

Thursday, October 17th, 2024 10am-12pm 

• We continue to live in unprecedented times with heightened anxiety and stress in regards to many issues: the crisis in the Middle East and concurrent debates about antisemitism and Islamophobia/anti-Palestinian politics on college campuses, continued anti-Black policies & systemic racism, anti-queer and anti-trans policies, financial crises, the ongoing challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, and a contentious political climate as we enter the tail end of the 2024 electoral season, among others. Students report feeling alienated, or confused, when instructors in their courses do not acknowledge such unsettling events, locally, nationally, and globally. As instructors, we make decisions whether, when, and how, to address such events with our students. This interactive in-person workshop provides an opportunity for instructors to think together and work through strategies for engaging with students in the classroom about emerging events on campus and beyond. This session is offered as part of the Promoting Democracy Teaching Series, co-sponsored by CRLT and Ginsberg Center.

Accessibility Practices for Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning

Tuesday, October 29, 2024 1pm-2:30pm 

• Community-engaged courses invite undergraduate and graduate students at Michigan to work with and in local communities through course assignments, clinical experiences, research projects, service hours, partnership development and other forms of engagement. Making these community-engaged learning activities accessible to students requires instructors to commit to considerable reflection, planning, and communication with students and community partners. In this session, participants will learn about common barriers to student access associated with community-engaged courses, identify accessibility practices for course design and disability accommodations, and discuss how to apply these practices to their own community-engaged courses and programs. 

Winter 2024

Power & Partnerships in Community Engagement

Tuesday February 6, 2024 1-2:30pm 

• Developing equitable and mutually beneficial partnerships with community members and organizations requires taking a critical look at how power operates in university-community partnerships. This interactive workshop will introduce participants to key principles of equity-focused community engagement and discuss how relationships of power shape university-community partnerships for research and student learning. We’ll consider how power operates in such areas as: the structure and terms of partnership agreements, participation dynamics in university-community projects, and funding/compensation. Participants will generate strategies for re-shaping inequitable power dynamics, share insights with colleagues, and identify ways to apply key principles to their own community-engaged work. This session is designed especially for participants who are involved in (or interested in) community-engaged research, teaching & learning, project/program administration, and/or campus initiatives at Michigan.

Effective Project Management in Community Engagement

Friday February 16, 2024 10-11:30am 

• Project management skills are essential for the success of community-engaged projects, yet formal instruction of these skills is often not included in the preparation that students receive for community-engaged assignments, research, and projects. In this workshop for faculty and staff, participants will learn about prerequisite project management skills that students need to know before they enter into community-engaged projects. From effective communication strategies to project onboarding templates, we’ll identify pedagogical strategies for teaching these key skills to students, improving coordination with community stakeholders, and supporting the continued development of students' project management skills as a community-engaged project unfolds. Guest speakers Bri Christy (Community Technical Assistance Collaborative at Ginsberg Center) and Caitlin Posillico (LSA Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences) will highlight practices for students in course and program-based projects, showing how traditional project management techniques can be adapted for these contexts.

Community-Engaged Scholarship Revealed

Thursday, March 28, 2024 from 3pm-4:30pm (Online via Zoom)

Campus Compact and The Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning (MJCSL), are partnering to host a virtual discussion with the authors published in the latest issue of the MJCSL (Vol 29, Issue 2). Participants will engage with authors directly to gain more insight into not only the findings of each article, but also the methods and process behind the findings. LEARN MORE 

From the volume: 

This volume includes a special section on Civic Identity which outlines the origins of the “core commitments and building blocks of civic identity,” identifies how each contribution connects to this framework, and offers some insights on how such a framework might help advance the field of community service-learning and related efforts.

 

Publishing Community-Engaged Scholarship

Tuesday March 5, 2024 1-2:30pm

• Join Nicole Springer, Editor of the Michigan Journal for Community Service Learning & Neeraja Aravamudan, Ginsberg Center Director & MJCSL Editorial Team Member for an interactive workshop on publishing your community-engaged scholarship, co-sponsored by The Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) and University of Michigan-Dearborn's Office of Engaged Learning. How is community-engaged scholarship different from other forms of scholarship? What are outlets for this scholarship? How can we maximize the impact of this scholarship for discipline(s), community partners/communities, and the field? What can you do to prepare yourselves to publish community engaged scholarship? Participants will also have the opportunity to apply ideas to their own research. 

Fall 2023

Power & Partnerships in Community Engagement - Strategizing with IRWG Affiliates

Tuesday September 12th, 2023 12pm-1pm (In Person, Lane Hall)

• In partnership with IRWG, this special session of Ginsberg Center’s Power & Partnership in Community Engagement is designed with IRWG affiliates and grant applicants in mind. This interactive workshop will introduce participants to key principles of equity-focused community engagement and identify some ways that relationships of power shape: the structure and terms of partnership agreements between community organizations and university partners; participation dynamics in university-community research projects; grant proposal preparation, knowledge production & dissemination; and more. Participants will encounter and generate strategies for re-shaping inequitable power dynamics, identify ways to apply key principles to their own community-engaged work. Lunch will be provided.

Introduction to University-Community Matchmaking

Thursday, September 21, 2023 10am-10:50am (on Zoom)

• With a network of over 300+ community partners across Southeast Michigan, the Edward Ginsberg Center works to connect local communities with U-M courses, researchers, internships and other community-engaged initiatives. Ginsberg Center’s Matchmaking Process helps faculty, staff and students learn about community priorities, translate university opportunities to a community audience, and develop strong relationships with local community partners. Curious about connecting with communities? Starting to plan for your future courses and projects? Join us for this informational session to learn more about Ginsberg’s matchmaking process!

Power & Partnership in Community Engagement

Friday, October 6, 2023 10am-11:30am (on Zoom)

• Developing equitable and mutually beneficial partnerships with community members and organizations requires taking a critical look at how power operates in university-community partnerships. This interactive workshop will introduce participants to key principles of equity-focused community engagement and discuss how relationships of power shape university-community partnerships for research and student learning. We’ll consider how power operates in such areas as: the structure and terms of partnership agreements, participation dynamics in university-community projects, and funding/compensation. Participants will generate strategies for re-shaping inequitable power dynamics, share insights with colleagues, and identify ways to apply key principles to their own community-engaged work. This session is designed especially for participants who are involved in (or interested in) community-engaged research, teaching & learning, project/program administration, and/or campus initiatives at Michigan.

Accessibility Practices for Community-Engaged Teaching & Learning

Tuesday October 24, 2023 1pm-2:30pm (on Zoom)

• Community-engaged courses invite undergraduate and graduate students at Michigan to work with and in local communities through course assignments, clinical experiences, research projects, service hours, partnership development and other forms of engagement. Making these community-engaged learning activities accessible to students requires instructors to commit to considerable reflection, planning, and communication with students and community partners. In this session, participants will learn about common barriers to student access associated with community-engaged courses, identify accessibility practices for course design and disability accommodations, and discuss how to apply these practices to their own community-engaged courses and programs.