Civic Practices Network - http://www.cpn.org

A Learning Collaborative for Civic Renewal Civic Practices Network (CPN) is a collaborative and nonpartisan project bringing together a diverse array of organizations and perspectives within the new citizenship movement. We share a commitment to bring practical methods for public problem solving into every community and institutional setting in America. We assume the responsibility of telling our stories, so that all citizens may have the opportunity to learn from what others are doing to renew their communities. And we have a common faith that we can revitalize our democracy to tackle the complex problems of the 21st century if we can broadly exchange and continually refine the civic wisdom of what works and what empowers citizens to work together. CPN is designed to bring schooling for active citizenship, which has always been at the heart of our rich democratic and associational life, into the information age.

CIVNET - http://www.civnet.org

Civnet, published by CIVITAS, is a Web site for civic education practitioners (teachers, teacher trainers, curriculum designers), as well as scholars, policymakers, civic-minded journalists, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) promoting civil society all over the world. civnet includes textbooks, lesson plans, original journal articles and book reviews, civic news headlines, events listings, organizational contacts, and a lot more.

civnet is unique in that it provides an international electronic resource where teachers may instantly receive and download teaching [resources], scholars may read the bi-monthly [journal] articles of thought and opinion, and use civnet's [links] to find a world of other civic Web resources, and staffs of NGOs may read what their colleagues are up to in civnet [news], network with their counterparts in other [organizations], and learn about upcoming civic events on the civnet calendar.

Engaging Communities and Campuses - http://www.cic.edu

Council of Independent Colleges’ Engaging Communities and Campuses project builds on current and past CIC initiatives on service-learning, college/community partnerships, and college urban missions. The $2.5 million grant funding the project is the largest in CIC's history.

Project Overview

The Engaging Communities and Campuses program focuses on the ways that private colleges and universities engage with off-campus communities both to enhance student learning and (simultaneously) to assist community organizations and residents in meeting their own agendas. The overall project revolves around the following premise: To prepare students for a lifetime of contribution to society, colleges must enable students to connect with the world beyond the campus—and the interests of those communities—while still enrolled in an educational program. To take advantage of these opportunities, institutions must confront a range of critical issues:

  • enabling students to appreciate various forms of learning in the world such as service-learning, internships, and action research
  • establishing staff positions that identify community opportunities and build relationships (e.g., service-learning or internship coordinators)
  • helping faculty gain skills in experiential learning (e.g., facilitating reflection)
  • determining the place of experiential learning opportunities in curricular schedules and sequences using communities as sources of knowledge
  • developing approaches to faculty development, workload, and reward systems that acknowledge this work
  • establishing long-term partnerships with businesses, governments, schools, and community organizations.

This multi-year initiative will consist of several complementary strategies that enable institutions to address these issues within their institution and in collaboration with other institutions.

The National Institute on Postsecondary Education, Libraries, and Lifelong Learning (PLLI) - http://www.ed.gov/offices/OERI/PLLI/

Seeks to expand knowledge about the education and training of adults in a variety of settings, including postsecondary institutions, community-based education programs, libraries, and the workplace. The Institute maintains an ongoing program of activities designed to inform the field about educational research, development, and dissemination. PLLI provides:

leadership through education research activities: grants for research and development centers, grants for field-initiated studies, and institute projects. technical assistance, extending state-of-the-art educational research dissemination of information through a variety of presentations, including publications, announcements, speeches, and topical papers.

The Collaboration for the Advancement of College Teaching & Learning - http://www.collab.org

The Collaboration for the Advancement of College Teaching & Learning is a regional membership organization that supports and promotes outstanding college teaching at public, private, and tribally-affiliated colleges and universities.

The Collaboration offers programs and services that:

  • provide professional support and renewal for those who want to enhance student learning through involvement in an inter-institutional and interdisciplinary community of peers,
  • identify trends and issues that affect teaching and learning and prepare faculty and staff to meet them;
  • identify, disseminate, and foster effective approaches to teaching, learning, and faculty development, and
  • engage members of the academic community in the collaborative, scholarly examination of their practice as teachers.

PREPARING FUTURE FACULTY - http://www.preparing-faculty.org

Preparing Future Faculty is a national network of academic leaders reshaping graduate education to include preparation for the full range of faculty roles subsumed by the terms teaching, research, and service. Participants observe and experience how these responsibilities can be carried out at a wide range of academic institutions with varying missions and diverse student bodies.

Preparing Future Faculty is a collaborative effort of colleges and universities organized into clusters led by a doctoral institution. Although each cluster of institutions or departments has a different approach, all seek to give doctoral students a fuller sense of what the academic profession is like and to prepare them for what it is likely to become in the years ahead. Preparing Future Faculty, a collaborative effort of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Council of Graduate Schools, is sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Science Foundation.