Elizabethtown College Director Prestigious Scholarships and Fellowships and Public Heritage Studies, Jean-Paul Benowitz recently taught a master class to faculty representing honors programs from around the nation about the importance of student engagement with the local community during their community-based learning and civically engaged research.
The National Collegiate Honors Council’s (NCHC), “Uncovering Chicago” master class event took place in Chicago, Ill. from Nov. 4 to 7 before the NCHC’s annual meeting that following week. A member of the NCHC’s Place As Text national committee, which provides professional development regarding pedagogy and academic advising for honors faculty, Benowitz took the opportunity to share the unique ways that Etown’s Honor Program employs the NCHC’s active learning pedagogy City As Text™ into their curricular and co-curricular programming.
“City As Text™ is an experiential learning pedagogy where students get off campus and into the local community which becomes the students’ classroom,” Benowitz said. “Both the College’s motto of Educate for Service and the Honors Program motto of Learn, Serve, Lead inspire students to act on what they learn. Employing the City As Text™ pedagogy into my Honors Community Based Learning courses has been an effective strategy for students conducting civically engaged research and producing scholarship contributing to the local community.”
In the master class, Benowitz explored inherent integrative learning capacity or generating a sense of interconnectedness, of self-in-context, and finding expression in professional practices.
As part of his master class, Benowitz led faculty on a four-day walking exploration of neighborhoods and communities in Chicago to demonstrate how honors students can engage in community-based learning from informed vantage points. He focused on how community-based learning and civically engaged research courses can connect honors students with the local community and produce social engagement and sensitivity.
Participants were able to hone their skills in observing information and being attentive to fresh perceptions and insights in new communities.
Later in the week, when honors students from around the nation arrived in Chicago for the annual NCHC meeting, Benowitz led the faculty master class in guiding more than 500 students through a one-day exploration of Chicago. The master class participants demonstrated what they learned about City As Text pedagogy while students learned about the importance of community-based and experiential learning.
