Center for Community-Based Learning hosts Our Jax Day
The University of North Florida’s Center for Community-Based Learning recently hosted its annual Our Jax Day event where UNF faculty participating in the Community Scholars Program (CSP) engage the local community through service activities.
For Our Jax Day, the CSP faculty worked with the LJD Jewish Family and Community Services (JFCS) Food Pantry to organize pantry shelves, stock pantry items and make boxes of food to be distributed to local families in need. The group also volunteered at the Jacksonville Zoo & Gardens to paint props and test lights for the upcoming winter holiday ZOOlights event. They ended the Our Jax Day with a visit to the Jessie Ball DuPont Center to engage with the United Way of Northeast Florida who hosted a Lunch-n-Learn presentation on poverty and how it affects many families in the local community.
The Community Scholars Program (CSP) is now in its 14th cohort and provides monthly workshops and one full day of experiential and service activities over the course of an academic year. The program aims to teach faculty how to develop community-based learning (CBL) courses or infuse the best practices of CBL into existing courses, programs of study or co-curricular projects. Our Jax Day is both fun and a critically important component of the CSP because it provides a condensed real-world example of what UNF faculty will require their own students to do in a semester-long CBL course at UNF.
This year’s CSP cohort 14 is led by Dr. Alarie Gibbs, CCBL curricular coordinator, and comprised of interdisciplinary faculty including Libby Aull and Cora Evenson from the School of Nursing; Dr. Tamara Gibson-Alonso from public health; Dr. Jen Kilpatrick from Deaf and Interpreter Education; Andy Kozlowski from art and design; and Dr. Margaret Stewart from the School of Communications.