community immersion program essay

Community Programs to Promote Youth Development (2002)

Chapter: 10 conclusions and recommendations, chapter 10 conclusions and recommendations.

I n recent years, a number of social forces have changed both the landscape of family and community life and the expectations for young people. A combination of factors have weakened the informal community support once available to young people: high rates of family mobility; greater anonymity in neighborhoods, where more parents are at work and out of the home and neighborhood for long periods, and in schools, which have become larger and much more heterogeneous; extensive media exposure to themes of violence and heavy use and abuse of drugs and alcohol; and, in some cases, the deterioration and disorganization of neighborhoods and schools as a result of crime, drugs, and poverty. At the same time, today’s world has become increasingly complex, technical, and multicultural, placing new and challenging demands on young people in terms of education, training, and the social and emotional skills needed in a highly competitive environment. Finally, the length of adolescence has extended to the mid- to late twenties, and the pathways to adulthood have become less clear and more numerous. In addition, many youth are entering the labor market with inadequate knowledge and such skills as the ability to communicate effectively, resolve conflicts, and prepare for and succeed in a job.

Concerns about youth are at the center of many policy debates. The future well-being of the country depends on raising a new generation of skilled, competent, and responsible adults. Yet at least 25 percent of adolescents in the United States are at serious risk of not achieving “productive adulthood” and face such risks as substance abuse, adolescent pregnancy, school failure, and involvement with the juvenile justice system. Depending on their circumstances and choices, they may carry those risks into their adult lives. Public investments in programs to counter such trends have grown significantly over the past decade or so. For the most part, these efforts have targeted specific problems and threats to young people. Substantial public health investments have been made to prevent teen smoking, sexually transmitted diseases, and other health risks. Major funding has been allocated to the prevention and control of juvenile delinquency and youth crime.

This report has explored the research and evaluation on adolescent development and community programs for youth. This chapter presents the committee’s primary conclusions and recommendations. We had the task of considering various aspects related to community programs for youth—from developing a general understanding of adolescent development, the needs of youth, and the fundamental nature of these programs, to critically examining the research, evaluation, and data instruments they use. We have organized the conclusions and recommendations around two primary themes: (1) policy and practice and (2) research, evaluation, and data collection.

POLICY AND PRACTICE

The committee began its work by drawing up a set of core concepts about adolescents that serve as a foundation for this report.

Some youth are doing very well. The good news for many young people is that many measures of adolescent well-being have shown significant improvement since the late 1980s. Young people are increasingly graduating from high school and enrolling in higher education. Almost half of the high school seniors participate in community service. Most young people are participating in physical exercise. Serious violent crime committed by adolescents, some illicit drug use, and teen pregnancy are down.

Some youth are taking dangerous risks and doing poorly. Some social indicators suggest continuing problems, particularly for minority youth living in poor communities and youth living in poor, single-parent

families. Youth from poor inner-city and rural areas are doing substantially worse on national achievement tests than youth from more affluent school districts. School dropout is particularly high among Hispanic youth and adolescents living in poor communities. Many young women and men are engaging in unsafe sex, exposing them to sexually transmitted infections. Smoking cigarettes, obesity, and gun violence on school campuses have all increased.

All young people need a variety of experiences to develop to their full potential. All youth need an array of experiences to reduce risk-taking and promote both current well-being and successful transition into adulthood. Such experiences include opportunities to learn skills, to make a difference in their community, to interact with youth from multicultural backgrounds, to have experiences in leadership and shared decision making, and to make strong connections with nonfamilial adults. These experiences are important to all young people, regardless of racial or ethnic group, socioeconomic status, or special needs.

Some young people have unmet needs and are particularly at risk of participating in problem behaviors. Young people who have the most severe unmet needs in their lives are particularly in jeopardy of participating in risk behaviors, such as dropping out of school, participating in violent behavior, or using drugs and alcohol. Young people with the most severe unmet needs often live in very poor and high-risk neighborhoods with few opportunities to get the critical experiences needed for positive development. They are often experience repeated racial and ethnic discrimination. Such youth have a substantial amount of free, unsupervised time during their nonschool hours. Other youth who are in special need of more programs include youth with disabilities of all kinds, youth from troubled family situations, and youth with special needs for places to find emotional support.

Promoting Adolescent Development at the Program Level

Understanding adolescent development and the factors contributing to the healthy development of all young people is critical to the design and implementation of community programs for youth. A priority of the committee’s work was identifying what is necessary for adolescents to be happy, healthy, and productive at the present time, as well as successful, contributing adults in the future.

Adolescence is a time of great change: biological changes associated with puberty, major social changes associated with transitions between

grade levels and changing roles and expectations, and major psychological changes linked to increasing social and cognitive maturity. With so many rapid changes comes a heightened potential for both positive and negative outcomes. Although most individuals pass through this developmental period without excessive problems, a substantial number experience difficulty.

The committee reviewed the basic tenets of human development, particularly during adolescence, and summarized the key characteristics of adolescent development. We focused on aspects of adolescent development and successful transitions to adulthood that have implications for program and policy design.

Beyond eliminating problems, the committee agreed that young people need skills, knowledge, and a variety of other personal and social assets to function well during adolescence and adulthood. But deciding what constitutes positive youth development is quite complex. Many characteristics were considered, and the committee recognized that selecting any particular set involved judgments regarding what is good. Nonetheless, longitudinal research does provide support for the links of some youth characteristics to subsequent positive adult outcomes. We were able to agree that there are some universal needs—such as the need to feel competent, to be socially connected, and to have one’s physical needs taken care of—that provide a basis for suggesting a set of assets and experiences very likely to be important for well-being. We also agreed that the failure to have these needs met is very likely to have negative consequences for well-being. We also agreed that there is extensive cultural specificity in exactly how these needs are met, as well as in the exact nature of how the assets are manifested in particular individuals. This means that the local cultural context must be taken into account as programs are designed and evaluated.

Based on a review of theory, practical experiences, and empirical research in the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and others, the committee identified a set of personal and social assets that both represent healthy development and well-being during adolescence and facilitate successful transitions from childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood. We grouped these assets into four broad developmental domains: physical, intellectual, psychological and emotional, and social development. Box ES-1 summarizes the four domains and specifies the assets within each.

Conclusions

Individuals do not necessarily need the entire range of assets to thrive; in fact, various combinations of assets across domains reflect equally positive adolescent development.

Having more assets is better than having few. Although strong assets in one category can offset weak assets in another category, life is easier to manage if one has assets in all four domains.

Continued exposure to positive experiences, settings, and people, as well as abundant opportunities to gain and refine life skills, supports young people in the acquirsition and growth of these assets.

The committee recognized that very little research directly specifies what programs can do to facilitate development, let alone how to tailor it to the needs of individual adolescents and diverse cultural groups. Few studies have applied the critical standards of science to evaluate which features of community programs influence development.

Despite these limitations, there is a broad base of knowledge about how development occurs that can and should be drawn on. Research demonstrates that certain features of the settings that adolescents experience make a tremendous difference, for good or for ill, in their lives. There is good evidence that personal and social assets develop in developmental settings that incorporate the features listed below and in Table ES-1 . The exact implementation of these features, however, needs to vary across programs, with their diverse clientele and differing constraints and missions. Young people develop positive personal and social assets in settings that have the following features:

Physical and psychological safety and security;

Structure that is developmentally appropriate, with clear expectations for behavior as well as increasing opportunities to make decisions, to participate in governance and rule-making, and to take on leadership roles as one matures and gains more expertise;

Emotional and moral support;

Opportunities for adolescents to experience supportive adult relationships;

Opportunities to learn how to form close, durable human relationships with peers that support and reinforce healthy behaviors;

Opportunities to feel a sense of belonging and being valued;

Opportunities to develop positive social values and norms;

Opportunities for skill building and mastery;

Opportunities to develop confidence in one’s abilities to master one’s environment (a sense of personal efficacy);

Opportunities to make a contribution to one’s community and to develop a sense of mattering; and

Strong links between families, schools, and broader community resources.

Since these features typically work together in synergistic ways, programs with more features are likely to provide better supports for young people’s positive development.

Although all of these features are key to the success of children and adolescents at all ages, specific settings may focus their priorities differently to meet the developmental needs of particular participants—for example, younger children need more adult-directed structure and supervision than older youth and the skills that one needs to learn in childhood are different from those that need to be learned in adolescence. Supportive, developmental settings, as a result, must be designed to be appropriate over time for different ages and to allow the setting to change in developmentally appropriate ways as participants mature. Positive development is also best supported by a wide variety of these experiences and opportunities in all of the settings in which adolescents live—the family, the school, the peer group, and the community. Still, exposure to such opportunities in community programs can compensate for lack of such opportunities in other settings.

Community programs can expand the opportunities for youth to acquire personal and social assets and to experience the broad range of features of positive developmental settings.

Programs can also fill gaps in the opportunities available in specific adolescents’ lives. Among other things, these programs can incorporate opportunities for physical, cognitive, and social and emotional development; opportunities to deal with issues of ethnic identity, sexual identity, and intergroup relationships; opportunities for community involvement and service; and opportunities to interact with caring adults and a diversity of peers who hold positive social norms and have high life goals and expectations.

Recommendation 1 —Community programs for youth should be based on a developmental framework that supports the acquisition of personal and social assets in an environment and through activities that promote both current adolescent well-being and future successful transitions to adulthood.

Serving Diverse Youth at the Community Level

Community programs are provided by many different individual organizations, each with their own unique approach and programmatic activities. They may be provided by local affiliates of large national youth-serving organizations or may be an independent organization that is affiliated with a public institution, such as a school or public library. They also may be small, autonomous grassroots organizations that exist independently in a community.

The focus of the activities may be sports and recreation, faith-based lessons, music and dance, academic enrichment, or workforce preparation. Programs may be targeted only to girls or only to boys; to a particular ethnic or religious group; or to young people with special interests. In addition, programs differ in their objectives, and some may choose to give more emphasis to particular program features.

Community-wide organizing of youth policies, as well as support for individual programs, also varies from community to community. Where there is a community infrastructure for support, the organizing body in a community might be the mayor’s office, a local government agency, or a community foundation. It might be a private intermediary organization or an individual charismatic leader, such as a minister or a rabbi of a local religious institution. However, it is often the case that there is no single person or group that is responsible for either monitoring the range and quality of community programs for youth or making sure that information about community programs is easily accessible to members of the community.

Adolescents in communities that are rich in developmental opportunities for them experience reduced risk and show evidence of higher rates of positive development. A diversity of program opportunities in each community is more likely to support broad adolescent development

and attract the interest of and meet the needs of a greater number of youth.

The complex characteristics of adolescent development and the increasing diversity of the country make the heterogeneity of young people in communities both a norm and a challenge. Therefore, effective programs must be flexible enough to adapt to this existing diversity among the young people they serve and the communities in which they operate. Even with the best staff and best funding, no single program can serve all young people or incorporate all of the features of positive developmental settings. A diversity of program opportunities in each community is more likely to support broad adolescent development and attract the interest of and meet the needs of a greater number of youth.

To provide for the most appropriate kinds of community programs for the diversity of youth in a community, communities should regularly assess the needs of adolescents and families and review available opportunities for their young people. While individual communities will invariably answer this challenge differently and make different judgments about the most appropriate ways to meet adolescent and community needs, there are several specific steps that the committee recommends be taken to support this kind of community mapping and monitoring.

Recommendation 2 —Communities should provide an ample array of program opportunities that appeal to and meet the needs of diverse youth, and should do so through local entities that can coordinate such work across the entire community. Particular attention should be placed on programs for disadvantaged and underserved youth.

Recommendation 3 —To increase the likelihood that an ample array of program opportunities will be available, communities should put in place some locally appropriate mechanism for monitoring the availability, accessability, and quality of programs for youth in their community.

Recommendation 4 —Private and public funders should provide the resources needed at the community level to develop and support community-wide programming that is orderly, coordinated, and evaluated in reasonable ways. In addition to support at the community level, this is likely to involve support for intermediary organizations and collaborative teams that include researchers, practitioners, funders, and policy makers.

RESEARCH, EVALUATION, AND DATA COLLECTION

The multiple groups concerned about community programs for youth—policy makers, families, program developers and practitioners, program staff, and young people themselves—have in common the fundamental desire to know whether programs make a difference in the lives of young people, their families, and their communities. Some are interested in learning about the effectiveness of specific details in a program; others about the effects of a given program; others about the overall effect of a set of programs together; and others about the effects of related kinds of programs. Research, program evaluation, and social indicator data can play a significant role in answering such questions, improving the design and delivery of programs, and thereby, improving the well-being and future success of young people.

The committee first reviewed research on both adolescent development and the features of positive developmental settings that support it. In both cases, the research base is just becoming comprehensive enough to allow for tentative conclusions about the individual assets that characterize positive development and features of settings that support it. The committee used a variety of criteria to suggest the tentative lists of both important individual-level assets and features of settings that support positive development outlined in Box ES-1 and Table ES-1 . These suggestions are based on scientific evidence from both short- and long-term experimental and observational studies, one-time large-scale survey studies, and longitudinal survey studies reviewed by the committee. However, much more comprehensive work is needed.

More comprehensive longitudinal and experimental research, that either builds on current efforts or involves new efforts, is needed on a wider range of populations that follows children and adolescents well into adulthood in order to understand which assets are most important to adolescent development and which patterns of assets are linked to particular types of successful adult transitions in various cultural contexts.

The list of features of positive settings, as well as both personal and social assets, that the committee has developed is provisional, the boundaries between the features are fuzzy, and the specific names given to each feature and asset reflect the terminology of the scientific disciplines in which the research was done. Research on a diverse group of adolescents followed well into adulthood is needed to understand which patterns of assets best predict successful adult transitions in various cultural contexts and how these assets work together in supporting both current and future well-being and success. Longitudinal research meets these objectives by collecting extensive psychological, social, and contextual information on the same individuals at different points in time. More experimental research that focuses on changing specific assets and characteristics of settings assumed to affect other assets is also needed in order to test causal hypotheses more sensitively.

Despite its limitations, research in all settings in the lives of adolescents—families, schools, and communities—is yielding consistent evidence that there are specific features of settings that support positive youth development and that these features can be incorporated into community programs.

Community programs have the potential to provide opportunities for youth to acquire personal and social assets and have important experiences that may be missing or are in short supply in the other settings of their lives. Whether they are packaged as teen pregnancy prevention programs, mental health programs, or youth development programs, such programs can lead to positive outcomes for youth. There is limited research, however, measuring the impact of these experiences on the development of young people and therefore limited evidence on why program effects are or are not obtained. Few researchers have applied the critical standards of science to evaluate which features of community programs influence development, which processes within each activity are related to these outcomes, and which combinations of features are best for which outcomes. Thus, there is very little research that will help organizations decide how they should tailor program activities to the needs of individual youth and diverse cultural groups.

Consequently, research is needed to sharpen the conceptualization of features of community programs and to explore whether other key features should be added to the list. This work should focus on how

different populations are affected by different program components and features (e.g., age, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, community environment, developmental readiness, personality, sexual orientation, skill levels). It should also focus on how to incorporate these features into community programs and on how to maintain them once they are in place. Finally, such research should identify program strategies, resource needs, and approaches to staff training and retention that can cultivate and support the features of positive developmental settings in community programs for youth.

In the committee’s judgment, current evidence supports the replication of a few specific integrated programs for positive youth development: the Teen Outreach Program, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and Quantum Opportunities are three prime examples.

Very few integrated programs have received the kind of comprehensive experimental evaluation necessary to make a firm recommendation about replicating the program in its entirety across the country. However, there is sufficient evidence from a variety of sources to make recommendations about some fundamental principles of supportive developmental settings and some specific aspects of programs that can be used to design community programs for youth. These are captured by the features of supportive settings outlined in Table ES-1 .

Recommendation 5 —Federal agencies that fund research on adolescent health, development, and well-being, such as the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Education, should build into their portfolios new or more comprehensive longitudinal and experimental research on the personal and social assets needed to promote the healthy development and well-being of adolescents and to promote the successful transition from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood.

Recommendation 6 —Public and private funders should support research on whether the features of positive developmental settings identified in this report are the most important features of community programs for youth. This research should encourage program design and implementation that meets the diverse needs of an increasingly heterogeneous population of youth.

Program Evaluation

Evaluation and ongoing program study can provide important insights to inform program design, selection, and modification. Program evaluation can also help funders and policy makers make informed choices about which programs to fund for which groups of youth. The desire to conduct high-quality evaluation can help program staff clarify their objectives and decide which types of evidence will be most useful in determining if these objectives have been met. Ongoing program study and evaluation can also be used by program staff, program participants, and funders to track program objectives; this is typically done by establishing a system for ongoing data collection that measures the extent to which various aspects of the programs are being delivered, how are they delivered, who is providing these services, and who is receiving them. Such information can provide useful information to program staff to help them make changes to improve program effectiveness. Finally, program evaluation can test both new and very well developed program designs by assessing the immediate, observable results of the program outcomes and benefits associated with participation in the program.

Such summative evaluation can be done in conjunction with strong theory-based evaluation or as a more preliminary assessment of the potential usefulness of novel programs and quite complex social experiments in which there is no well-specified theory of change. In other words, program evaluation and study can help foster accountability, determine whether programs make a difference, and provide staff with the information they need to improve service delivery.

Clearly there are many purposes for evaluation. Not surprisingly then, there are different opinions among service practitioners, researchers, policy makers, and funders about the most appropriate and useful methods for evaluating community programs for youth. In part, these disagreements reflect different goals and different questions about youth programs. In part, they reflect philosophical differences about the purposes of evaluation and nature of program development. Program practitioners, policy makers, program evaluators, and others studying programs should decide exactly which questions they want answered before deciding on the most appropriate methods. The most comprehensive experimental evaluation, which involves assessment of the quality of implementation as well as outcomes, is quite expensive and involves a variety of methods. It also provides the most comprehensive information regarding both the effectiveness of specific programs and the reasons for their effectiveness.

Very few high-quality comprehensive experimental evaluations of community programs for youth have adequately assessed the impact of the programs on adolescents.

This is presumably due to many factors—including the low priority accorded to evaluation by organizations struggling to fund services; inadequate funding for such evaluations and overreliance on program staff to conduct such evaluation, despite the fact that they have limited training to conduct such evaluations and limited time and funds to devote to such an effort; ethical concerns among practitioners and policy makers about the random assignment of some youth to programs and others to a control group receiving no services; unrealistic demands by many program funders for quick answers about the impact of programs they fund; and scarcity of the type of collaborative teams involving the research, practice, and policy communities needed to design and implement high-quality, comprehensive experimentally based evaluations. Comprehensive experimental evaluation takes time, money, and technical knowledge—features not always plentiful within agencies providing services to youth.

Some high-quality experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations show positive effects on a variety of outcomes, including both increases in the psychological and social assets of youth and decreases in the incidence of such problem behaviors as early pregnancy, drug use, and delinquent behavior.

Usually, as expected given the complexity of the behaviors being assessed and the wide range of influences on these behaviors, these effects are small for the population being studied. Nonetheless, at the individual level, the effects can be quite large and life-transforming. Such impacts are rarely reported in standard experimental evaluations, because their goal is to estimate the average effect size. Most of these evaluations also tell us little about which components of programs are the most important contributors to the positive results, the cost-effectiveness of the programs, or the reasons why programs fail.

Randomized trial experimental evaluation is often recommended as the best method for assessing whether a program influences youth development, but this design can be costly, and time-consuming and may not always be the most useful and most appropriate method of study. In

addition, unless coupled with an evaluation of the implementation and with methods designed to assess the reasons for the experimental effects, experimental evaluations by themselves provide only limited information about a program’s effectiveness.

Experimental designs are still the best method for estimating the impact of a program on its participants and should be used when this is the goal of the evaluation.

Comprehensive program evaluation is an even better way to gather complete information about programs. It requires asking a number of questions through various methods. The committee identified six fundamental questions that should be considered in comprehensive evaluations:

Is the theory of the program that is being evaluated explicit and plausible?

How well has the program theory been implemented in the sites studied?

In general, is the program effective and, in particular, is it effective with specific subpopulations of young people?

Whether it is or is not effective, why is this the case?

What is the value of the program?

What recommendations about action should be made?

All six questions may not be answered well in one study; several evaluations may be needed to address these questions. Thus comprehensive experimental evaluation can be quite expensive and time-consuming—but it provides the most information about program design, as well as fundamental questions about human development. Thus, it is particularly useful to both the policy and research communities, as well as the practice community.

In order to generate the kind of information about community programs for youth needed to justify large-scale expenditures on programs and to further fundamental understanding of role of community programs in youth development, comprehensive experimental program evaluations should be used when:

the object of study is a program component that repeatedly occurs across many of the organizations currently providing community services to youth;

an established national organization provides the program being evaluated through many local affiliates; and

theoretically sound ideas for a new demonstration program or project emerge, and pilot work indicates that these ideas can be implemented in other contexts.

Comprehensive experimental evaluations are usually not appropriate for newer, less established programs or programs that lack a well-articulated theory of change underlying the program design. A variety of nonexperimental methods, such as interviewing, case studies, and observational techniques, and more focused experimental and quasi-experimental studies are ways to understand and assess these types of community programs for youth. Although the nonexperimental methods tell us less about the effectiveness of particular community programs than experimental program evaluations, they can, when carefully implemented, provide information about the strengths and weakness in program implementation and can be used to identify patterns of effective practice. They are also quite helpful in generating hypotheses about why programs fail.

Programs that meet the following criteria should be studied through nonexperimental or more focused experimental and quasi-experimental methods, depending on the goals of the evaluation:

An organization, program, project, or program element that has not matured sufficiently in terms of its philosophy and implementation;

The evaluation has to be conducted by the staff of the program under evaluation;

The major questions of interest pertain to the quality of the program theory, the implementation of that theory, or to the nature of its participants, staff, or surrounding context;

The program is quite broad, involving multiple agencies in the same community; and

The program or organization is interested in reflective practice and continuing improvement.

Whether experimental or nonexperimental methods are used, high-quality, comprehensive evaluation is important to the future development and success of community programs for youth and should be used by all programs and youth-serving organizations.

Recommendation 7 —All community programs for youth should undergo evaluation—possibly multiple evaluations—to improve design and implementation, to create accountability, and to assess outcomes and impacts. For any given evaluation, the scope and the rigor should be appropriately calibrated to the attributes of the program, the available resources, and the goals of the evaluation.

Recommendation 8 —Funders should provide the necessary funds for evaluation. In many cases, this will involve support for collaborative teams of researchers, evaluators, theoreticians, policy makers, and practitioners to ensure that programs are well designed initially and then evaluated in the most appropriate way.

Data Collection and Social Indicators

Over the past decade, social indicator data and technical assistance resources have become increasingly important tools that community programs can employ to support every aspect of their work—from initial planning and design, to tracking goals, program accountability, targeting services, reflection, and improvement. There are now significant data and related technical assistance resources to aid in understanding the young people involved in these programs. Community programs for youth benefit from ready access to high-quality data that allow them to assess and monitor the well-being of youth in their community, the well-being of youth they directly serve, and the elements of their programs that are intended to support those youth. They also benefit from information and training to help them use these data tools wisely and effectively.

Even when exploited to their full potential, administrative, vital statistics, and related data sources can cover only limited geographic areas and only some components of a youth development framework. Adding local survey data in diverse communities, as has been done in a number of states and individual communities, can help create a more complete picture.

Community programs for youth are interested in building their capacity to assess the quality of their programs. To produce useful process

evaluations, performance monitoring, and self-assessment, however, program practitioners need valid, reliable indicators of the developmental quality of the experiences they provide. Such information would also facilitate the ability of communities to monitor change over time as new program initiatives are introduced into the community. If communities know how their youth are doing on a variety of indicators for an extended period of time both before and after a new program is introduced, they can use this information as preliminary evidence that their program is effective. Such inferences are strengthened if information on the same indicators is available in comparable communities that did not introduce that program at the same time. Research is needed to determine whether appropriate indicators vary depending on the characteristics of the specific youth population served by a program and as understanding of the determinants of positive youth development improves, these indicators should be periodically revisited and, if necessary, revised.

Many community programs also lack staff knowledge and the funds to take full advantage of social indicators as tools to aid in planning, monitoring, assessing, and improving program activities. Individual programs and communities would benefit from opportunities to increase their capacity to collect and use social indicator data.

Recommendation 9 —Public and private funders should support the fielding of youth development surveys in more states and communities around the country; the development, testing, and fielding of new youth development measures that work well across diverse population subgroups; and greater coordination between measures used in community surveys and national longitudinal surveys.

Recommendation 10 —Public and private funders should support collaboration between researchers and the practice community to develop social indicator data that build understanding of how programs are implemented and improve the ability to monitor programs. Collaborative efforts would further the understanding of the relationship between program features and positive developmental outcomes among young people.

Recommendation 11 —Public and private funders should provide opportunities for individual programs and communities to improve their capacity to collect and use social indicator data. This requires better training for program staff and more support for national and regional

intermediaries that provide technical assistance in a variety of ways, including Internet-based systems.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The desire among program practitioners, policy makers, scholars, scientists, parents, and society to make sure young people are healthy, happy, safe, and productive is not new. Offering formal and informal programs in the community for adolescents during nonschool hours is not new. These programs have a long history of providing positive opportunities to keep youth safe and to facilitate their development and well-being. Various individuals and professional organizations are committed to better understanding these programs and providing technical assistance to encourage their success.

The scientific evidence that elucidates the ways in which community programs for youth provide opportunities to promote adolescent development and well-being, however, is less well developed. This report has explored these programs from this perspective and presented a set of recommendations targeted at various stakeholders: practitioners (program developers, practitioners, managers, and staff); community leaders (staff and leaders in a mayor’s office, local government agencies, community foundations, private intermediaries, as well as individual community leaders); and national leaders (public and private funders, policy makers, researchers, and evaluators). The recommendations in this report have the potential to enhance existing community programs for youth, promote adolescent development among diverse groups of youth and varied communities, and increase knowledge about the links between community programs for youth and adolescent development.

After-school programs, scout groups, community service activities, religious youth groups, and other community-based activities have long been thought to play a key role in the lives of adolescents. But what do we know about the role of such programs for today's adolescents? How can we ensure that programs are designed to successfully meet young people's developmental needs and help them become healthy, happy, and productive adults?

Community Programs to Promote Youth Development explores these questions, focusing on essential elements of adolescent well-being and healthy development. It offers recommendations for policy, practice, and research to ensure that programs are well designed to meet young people's developmental needs.

The book also discusses the features of programs that can contribute to a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood. It examines what we know about the current landscape of youth development programs for America's youth, as well as how these programs are meeting their diverse needs.

Recognizing the importance of adolescence as a period of transition to adulthood, Community Programs to Promote Youth Development offers authoritative guidance to policy makers, practitioners, researchers, and other key stakeholders on the role of youth development programs to promote the healthy development and well-being of the nation's youth.

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Development and evaluation of a community immersion program during preclinical medical studies: a 15-year experience at the University of Geneva Medical School

P chastonay.

1 Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Geneva, Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland

2 Unit of Development and Research in Medical Education, University of Geneva, Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland

3 Nutrition and Dietetics Department, University of Applied Sciences, Geneva, Switzerland

4 Swiss School of Public Health, Zurich, Switzerland

5 Department of Neurosciences, University of Geneva, Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland

Significant changes in medical education have occurred in recent decades because of new challenges in the health sector and new learning theories and practices. This might have contributed to the decision of medical schools throughout the world to adopt community-based learning activities. The community-based learning approach has been promoted and supported by the World Health Organization and has emerged as an efficient learning strategy. The aim of the present paper is to describe the characteristics of a community immersion clerkship for third-year undergraduate medical students, its evolution over 15 years, and an evaluation of its outcomes.

A review of the literature and consensus meetings with a multidisciplinary group of health professionals were used to define learning objectives and an educational approach when developing the program. Evaluation of the program addressed students’ perception, achievement of learning objectives, interactions between students and the community, and educational innovations over the years.

The program and the main learning objectives were defined by consensus meetings among teaching staff and community health workers, which strengthened the community immersion clerkship. Satisfaction, as monitored by a self-administered questionnaire in successive cohorts of students, showed a mean of 4.4 on a five-point scale. Students also mentioned community immersion clerkship as a unique community experience. The learning objectives were reached by a vast majority of students. Behavior evaluation was not assessed per se, but specific testimonies show that students have been marked by their community experience. The evaluation also assessed outcomes such as educational innovations (eg, students teaching other students), new developments in the curriculum (eg, partnership with the University of Applied Health Sciences), and interaction between students and the community (eg, student development of a website for a community health institution).

The community immersion clerkship trains future doctors to respond to the health problems of individuals in their complexity, and strengthens their ability to work with the community.

Significant changes in medical education have occurred over recent decades due to new challenges in the health sector and new learning theories. 1 The upcoming generation of physicians will be confronted with professional challenges, such as management of complex health problems, care of patients from different cultural backgrounds, and the need to work as team players in collaboration with other health professionals. 2 Indeed, future physicians will be expected to be not only good clinicians, but also to be capable of working in and with the community, collecting epidemiological data, planning health promotion interventions, promoting screening programs, and understanding the communities their patients live in. 3 , 4

This might have contributed to the decision of medical schools throughout the world to adopt community-based learning activities, 5 with some emblematic examples, such as the Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho program in the US, 6 the early community-oriented training experiences of Finnish medical schools, 7 and the heavily community-based curriculum of Canal Suez University in rural Egypt. 8 In fact, community “immersion learning has emerged as a strategy that addresses both educational and societal needs”, according to Zink et al. 9

The community-based learning approach has been further strengthened by the World Health Organization, which defines the social accountability of medical schools as “the obligation to direct education, research and service activities towards addressing priority health concerns of the community”. 10 Demonstrating social accountability in medical education calls for increasing student awareness of community health in its complexity. 11

From both a public health perspective and an educational perspective, immersion of medical students in the community seems a relevant way to raise awareness of future physicians of the health needs of the community and of the psychosocial dimensions of any health problem. 12 Indeed, sending medical students out into the community has been reported to have a positive impact on their future community engagement, giving them the opportunity of an early experience. 13 , 14

With the initiation of a new six-year integrated problem-based undergraduate medical curriculum in 1996, an interdisciplinary longitudinal community health program was introduced and progressively implemented at the Medical School in Geneva. 15 , 16 The objective of the paper is to describe the characteristics of one of the teaching activities of the community health program which has been its hallmark and met with remarkable success, ie, the community immersion clerkship, 17 as well as some community immersion clerkship evaluation data collected over a 15-year period and developments over the years.

Materials and methods

Time frame and study population.

The data reported corresponds to a 15-year observation period, ie, from spring 1997 to summer 2012. Over the 15-year period, we studied third-year medical students (in their last preclinical year), varying in number between 65 and 140 students a year, joined since 2007 by a small number of nutrition students (5–18 per year) from the University of Applied Health Sciences, giving in total 1407 students.

On a yearly basis, 22–35 health professionals participated as tutors, guiding the students through their community immersion projects. Some of these were community-based professionals, and others were teachers at the University of Applied Health Sciences or from the Medical School. Also, on a yearly basis, 8–10 health professionals working in grassroots projects at the community level were invited to present their activities to students in seminars. Furthermore, over the years, students visited (and revisited) more than 100 different community health institutions.

Study design

The course objectives and educational modalities were defined according to various approaches, and several methods of consensus (such as directed brainstorming and visualized discussion) between teachers and public health professionals taking a public health course at the university 18 , 19 were adopted. A survey of public health competencies useful to the practitioner was also done, 20 as was a review of the literature. The implementation process was started within the context of a global curriculum reorganization, adopting problem-based learning and bedside learning as the main educational strategies. 21

A global evaluation process was adopted for the program. The students’ perception of the program was monitored using a closed-response questionnaire on a five-point scale (1, very dissatisfied; 5, very satisfied). The questionnaire included items such as potential interest in investigating a health problem in its complexity, the potential enrichment in meeting with community health practitioners, and the potential positive experience of writing a report on the overall organization of the program. The students’ perception of the program was also monitored by yearly open group discussion. Second, achievement of learning objectives was evaluated by the program directors and teaching staff, according to a global grid integrating recommendations from educators, 22 a written report (on average 50 pages), an oral presentation of the group work to fellow students (30-minute presentation followed by a 10-minute question session), a poster presentation either on the community health network in charge of the investigated problem or on a specific aspect of the problem, as well as by a self-evaluation questionnaire administered to a selected cohort of students. Further, specific outcomes were monitored by the program coordinators over the years.

Program development

The 4–6-week community immersion clerkship is given at the end of the third preclinical year. Students in groups of 3-5 investigate and report on a priority health problem either in Geneva or in another country which their group has collectively selected and which has been accepted by the program coordinating staff. As a team, the students investigate their selected health problem by getting directly in touch, interviewing, and interacting with various community health institutions or community actors dealing with the problem at large (politicians, opinion leaders, associations, nongovernmental organizations), as well as meeting with concerned patients and families. Eventually, the students have to report on their investigation and findings in front of their peers. Each group of students has a tutor, usually a medical doctor or a social scientist with a public health background.

The community immersion clerkship is part of a larger community health program spanning the 6 years of undergraduate medical training, including community-oriented (epidemiology, occupational health, health economics, and ethics) as well as community-based training activities (such as ambulatory care clerkship, home care visits, and short-term clerkships in “low threshold” community health structures for vulnerable populations). 15 , 16

Definition of learning objectives

The main learning objectives were defined by consensus meetings between teaching staff and community health workers. These professionals came to the conclusion that, at the end of their community immersion clerkship, students should be able to:

• select and plan as a team an investigation in a community setting on a health problem in order to understand the problem in its biopsychosocial complexity
• collect the pertinent public health data and reflect upon them
• collaborate with the network of health institutions and professionals
• produce a written and oral report of the experiences and the health problem investigated.

More specific learning objectives that were adopted are summarized in Table 1 . These include classical public health competencies as well as communication competencies and knowledge of basic human rights.

Specific learning objectives of the community immersion clerkship

Definition of educational approach

Consensus was reached between teaching staff and the educational experts of the Unit of Development and Research in Medical Education at the Medical School and the Bachelor (preclinical) Program Committee that the students should:

• be put into an active learning situation, with the assignment being to investigate a given health topic by going into the community, write a report, and give a lecture on their community experience to their peers
• interact with community health workers and community health institutions in order to discover the community health network
• be given some autonomy in their investigation of a health problem and have the opportunity to choose their field of investigation and their team in order to keep motivation alive
• write a report.

Data evaluation

Evaluation of perception: student satisfaction.

Satisfaction, as monitored by a self-administered evaluation questionnaire in successive cohorts of students was high, with a mean global value of 4.4 and a mean participation rate over the years of 74%. More specifically, students ranked high the fact that community immersion clerkship allowed them to interact with community health practitioners (mean 4.6) and gave them the opportunity to investigate a health problem in its complexity (mean 4.5). Further, they appreciated the opportunity given to make an oral presentation of their work in front of their peers (mean 4.6). Less positively considered were the obligation to write a report (mean 3.7) and the amount of work that was expected (mean 3.8). Through the yearly brainstorming sessions organized (using the SWOT technique), 23 students’ perception of the highlights and pitfalls of the program showed consistency over time ( Table 2 ), and the taste of liberty (getting away from books) and discovery of the community, patients, families, and health professionals were much appreciated. Less enthusiasm was shown for writing the report or attending seminars.

Strengths and weaknesses of the community immersion clerkship according to students over the years (aggregated data)

Evaluation of learning: student performance

Acquisition of learning objectives, as measured by the quality of the written report, oral presentation, and poster presentation was good to very good for over 85% of students as evaluated by the program directors and teaching staff. When students were asked to self-evaluate the acquisition of competencies during their community immersion clerkship, it appeared that a large majority felt that they had acquired those competencies well ( Table 3 , data from two successive cohorts comprising 169 students).

Percentages of students who self-reported being able to perform specific clerkship-related competencies 9 months before the clerkship and one month, one year, 2 years, and 3 years afterwards

Behavior evaluation

Behavior evaluation could not be monitored per se. However, testimonies by former students indicate that the community immersion clerkship experience was a crucial one in their preclinical years. A few examples reported elsewhere 17 are given here as an illustration:

• “Never again shall we consider a mentally retarded child with the same eyes”, from a group who worked with children living with a handicap in Geneva
• “This experience helped us to understand that as medical doctors we are expected to play a role in the political debate”, from a group who worked on alternative medicines and their reimbursement by social security
• “We were ambivalent: was it good enough to treat the victim (wife) or go after the aggressor (husband)”, from a group who worked on honor crimes in India
• “It was a matter of a couple of packs of antibiotics and the mother would have survived: it was terribly hard to accept”, from a group who worked on mother and child health in Burkina Faso.

Impact evaluation

Educational innovations.

In the context of Geneva, the community immersion clerkship was innovative in introducing community-based activities and allowing the students to experience the hands-on approach of getting involved with community health institutions. It was also innovative in integrating community health workers into the teaching staff. Furthermore, it introduced innovative evaluation procedures, because it abandoned traditional multichoice questions in favor of a written report on the health topic investigated an oral presentation to fellow students, and a poster presentation on the community health network in charge of the health problem investigated. Some of these innovations even had some influence on several other programs of the curriculum, especially elective programs where several courses adopted written reports or oral presentations in front of colleagues as examination procedures.

Curriculum adaptations

Two major innovations took place over the years. The first was the development of collaboration with the University of Applied Health Sciences in charge of training nurses, dieticians, midwives, physiotherapists, and medical radiology technicians. This allowed creation of multiprofessional groups of students, similar to the teams of health professionals they would have to work with in the future. This experience, now in its seventh year, appears to be positive, with students as well as tutors having identified the complementary vision such an approach brings in studying a health problem in its biopsychosocial dimensions. Second, there was the possibility 10 years ago to take a clerkship, which was initially limited at Geneva, in a community health setting abroad. This triggered extraordinary interest among the students, who over the years came up with interesting community health projects around the world. Students must submit a community health project, which might be accepted or not by an ad hoc committee, and the project must also get support from a local community health structure that is in close connection with a Swiss-based association. Over the years, students have investigated health problems and become acquainted with different health systems with different social and cultural contexts in over 35 countries. Student feedback continues to be very positive, eg, “a unique experience, very enriching, that brings you to consider the world differently and that triggers a very personal journey on one’s role as a health professional and a world citizen”. Examples of topics investigated abroad and also in Geneva are listed in Table 4 .

Community immersion program: examples of topics studied over the years in Geneva and abroad

Abbreviations: AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome; HIV, human immunodeficiency virus; STD, sexually transmitted infection.

Interactions between students and the community

Over the 15-year period of observation, while investigating their specific public health problems, students visited several hundred community health structures, local nongovernmental organizations, and international organizations. They also met and interviewed hundreds of patients and their families, as well as community health personnel and political decision-makers.

Students who took their clerkship in Geneva also organized specific events related to the health topic they were investigating, such as intra-university prevention campaigns against melanoma, promotion of vaccination against hepatitis B, and developing guidelines for prevention of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome among migrant populations. On several occasions, the students’ work had a direct influence on decisions made by health authorities, including:

• having investigated the health situation in “radical” squats, they organized “in-betweens”, ie, meetings between the squatters and the state health authorities who had “somewhat lost control of the situation”, a consequence of these meetings was the improvement of hygiene in the squats
• having worked on alternative and complementary medicines, the students helped to convince the ministry of health to reconsider reimbursement of these medicines by social insurance
• quite often (at least several times a year), community health professionals and institutions informed the course organizers that: they were grateful to the medical school for allowing its students to visit their community health institutions and to explore the health problem they were in charge of in its complexity, including its social dimensions; the students also regularly brought a new perspective to the investigated problem, in part due to their “innocence”, which allowed the professionals to reconsider some of their “established attitudes”.

Students who took their clerkship abroad were often able to support local community health centers in a very concrete way, such as teaching diabetic patients at a suburban health center in Ecuador, monitoring neonatal complications in a mother and child health center in Nicaragua, teaching basic hygiene (how to brush teeth and wash hands) to children in an orphanage in Vietnam, monitoring nosocomial infections in a community hospital in Mali, and developing a website and a brand for a small nongovernmental organization in Bolivia.

High student satisfaction rates and sustained student enthusiasm, strong faculty commitment, university support, and good acceptance by community health actors have allowed the community immersion clerkship program to become a highlight of the Geneva problem-based medical curriculum over the past 15 years. The community immersion clerkship program has also strengthened ties between community health institutions and the Medical School, contributing to the latter’s social accountability, as discussed in the literature. 24

The Geneva community immersion clerkship program was conceived of taking into account the community-based education recommendations defined by the World Health Organization 25 , 26 and later developed by Kristina et al, 27 including competencies in prevention and health promotion, identifying factors impacting on health, determining the incidence and prevalence of disease in the community, and collaborating with professionals from other disciplines. A special focus of the Geneva community immersion clerkship has been to facilitate students in encountering patients and health professionals in their own environment and confronting them with “the complex interplay between physical, psychological, social and environmental factors in health and illness”. 27

As mentioned elsewhere in the literature, 28 the consensus approach adopted by teachers and partner institutions in developing the program and defining its objectives seemed to facilitate implementation of the program and contribute to tutors’ commitment. It probably also strengthened the interaction between the students and community health institutions, thus providing facilitated learning opportunities, as has been reported already. 29

The evaluation results overall show student high satisfaction with the community immersion clerkship. In fact, the clerkship gets its highest approval ratings in the Geneva undergraduate medical curriculum, 16 with community-based medical programs being frequently evaluated well by students. 30 Students mentioned in particular their interactions with community health professionals, and patients and families as being fulfilling, enriching, and stimulating, which has also been mentioned by others. 31

Globally, the quality of the students’ work, in the form of written reports, oral presentations, and poster presentations, met the teachers’ expectations and university standards, in part due to the enthusiasm and commitment of students in their community involvement, which has been reported elsewhere. 31 Further, the students’ perception of their competencies seemed to be maintained over the years. Subjective self-reported perception of acquired competencies and high satisfaction with the community experience might stimulate motivation for learning 32 and orient future medical activities, contributing to the “training of community-responsive physicians”. 33

Although there was no true behavior evaluation, strong testimonies from students regarding their community experience suggest that this early hands-on experience in community settings might represent an important formative process and contribute to development of appropriate attitudes towards their future medical practice. 34 , 35

The community immersion clerkship program was quite innovative in its educational approach, at least when compared with local standards, given that it is a unique community immersion experience during the whole curriculum and fosters critical thinking and creativity among students.

There were two major adaptations made to the community immersion clerkship over the years, much in accordance with international recommendations. 36 First, a “formal partnership” with the University of Applied Health Sciences in charge of training nurses, physiotherapists, midwives, dieticians, and medical radiology technicians was established with the Medical School, which allowed collaborative projects between students, thus mixing students of different professional orientations and preparing them for future multiprofessional teamwork in the health sector, which has been advocated in the past. 37 Indeed, students showing prior experience with interprofessional education have been demonstrated to report significantly more positive attitudes towards multidisciplinary teamwork. 38 Second, the option to take the community immersion clerkship abroad fostered much energy and enthusiasm among students. It also gave students the opportunity for intercultural exposure and confronted them with health care at primary health care levels as well as with health issues when resources are scarce; such intercultural experiences might be especially valuable in the long term for medical practitioners in an ever-changing patient population. 39

The Geneva community immersion clerkship allowed students to interact with community health professionals, patients and their families, and community health decision-makers, such as politicians, legislators, and leaders, as well as community and nongovernmental organization leaders, thus preparing them to consider themselves as part of a network and as team members charged with the health of both individuals and communities, as recommended. The community immersion clerkship program also allowed hands-on experience with the implementation of real community health projects with the potential to contribute to the health of communities, and has certainly helped students to understand the concepts of public health. 40

The community immersion clerkship aims to train future doctors to respond to the health problems of individuals in all their complexity and to strengthen their ability to work with the community in order to promote healthy lifestyles and adequate health services, as well as raising their awareness of the necessity to collaborate with other health professionals. So far, the experience has been positive and the early enthusiasm of students has survived over the years. In the future, the program will need to move forward and seek more community involvement of students, encouraging them to make a commitment to and take leadership of community health projects, especially ones targeting vulnerable subgroups of the population, and thus drawing the Medical School towards more community involvement and more social accountability and responsibility.

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

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The Impact of Immersion

The Immersion Program at Rollins College is rooted in community engagement and leadership, seeking to broaden students’ understanding of the world through exposure to new environments and hands-on learning experiences.

“Ninety to ninety-five percent of immersion participants either agree or strongly agree that immersion experiences have an impact on them—to say it is powerful would be an understatement,” said Meredith Hein, director of the Center for Leadership and Community Engagement (CLCE) at Rollins College. “I truly believe it’s a life-changing experience for our students.”

The Immersion Program exists to offer student-led alternative break trips throughout Florida and other areas of the country. These trips, referred to as immersions, may last for a weekend or for a whole week, and are led by two student facilitators and one staff or faculty member. Each experience generally has between ten and twenty participants and focuses on a social impact area such as hunger, homelessness, the environment, or disaster relief, among many others. Immersion facilitators emphasize experiential learning and reflection on these trips, encouraging participants to consider how the issues they’re learning about affect their everyday lives.

The Immersion Program has been a part of Rollins since 2007, though it has experienced its most significant growth within the past three years. Meredith credits much of the Immersion Program’s recent success to the generous giving of the Miller Foundation.

“I don’t know that the Immersion Program would even exist [without funding from the Miller Foundation],” she said. “The Immersion Program is such a significant part of our work at Rollins. When you have a donor that supports something that is at the core of your mission, you can take a deep sigh of relief—you can sleep at night.”

Unprecedented Growth

Demand for immersion experiences has soared at Rollins in the last few years, to the point that CLCE has begun offering weekend experiences as well as week-long experiences. Each school year, more than 300 students, faculty, and staff members participate in twenty to twenty-five immersion experiences. As a result, Rollins has been ranked No. 1 for the highest percentage of students who participate in alternative break trips for three years in a row by Break Away, a national nonprofit organization that promotes quality alternative breaks.

Raul Carril (’15), a Rollins alumni and current graduate assistant with CLCE, remembers how the number of immersion applicants almost doubled in 2013-2014, the year he served as the student coordinator for the program. Raul believes that strengthening the Immersion Program brand—known as “Immersion Blue”—sparked new interest in the program that year by giving students something to gravitate toward visually.

“What are these immersion things?” students would ask when they saw their friends wearing their Immersion Blue T-shirts or painting their fingernails blue in anticipation of the reveal of new immersion destinations.

“I famously say that Immersion Blue is my favorite color,” Raul said. “[The brand] represents what has come out in Rollins through this program. It has created that culture and that atmosphere and something that resonates with our community. It is not just something within Student Affairs—it’s a larger initiative now within the Rollins campus community.”

A Place to Belong

“Not doing anything for fall break?” it read. “Come join us for a ‘Hot and Sweaty in the Swamp’ immersion experience.”

With no other plans in place, Raul decided to join the group in the Everglades—something he now says was one of the best decisions he ever made. The other participants on the trip became some of his closest friends at Rollins. One of the facilitators introduced him to the fraternity he eventually joined, and another facilitator would later co-lead an immersion experience to West Virginia with him.

“It’s been kind of a whirlwind, thinking about that one crazy email I opened and how that influenced and impacted my five years at Rollins,” he said. “I’m really grateful and really humbled by what the program and that opportunity have done for me.”

Meredith Hein says that Raul’s experience is not unusual—immersions serve as the gateway for many students to find their place on campus.

“We have experiences just for first-year students, and they go and find ‘their people,’” she said. “[Students] come to Rollins from all across the world. . . . They may be the only person they know coming to our institution. Some students find their niche through the social setting, but many find their place by doing this type of work.”

A Broader Worldview

For many other students, immersions open their eyes to the wider world outside of Rollins, and they return with new realizations and questions about social impact areas.

“Everything in that experience is built around thinking through how it’s meeting major learning outcomes,” Meredith said. “We use this term ‘unlearning.’ Up until students enter college, the foundation of where they’ve gained their knowledge and skills comes from their experiences or what someone else has told them. These immersions truly change the way our students think.”

This was the case for the program’s 2015-2016 student coordinator, Courtney Durbin (’16).

“I went on an immersion, and it really changed my perspective of how I was in this Rollins bubble,” Courtney said. “The Orlando area has a high level of homelessness, so to learn that and to know that there are people just down the street who are homeless and struggling to feed their children, it made me realize serving and helping others is a passion of mine.”

Courtney remembers her first immersion experience to St. Petersburg, Florida, vividly.

“There was one girl who was seventeen, younger than me, and she was homeless. It hit me in that moment—it can happen to anyone,” Courtney said. “I think there’s this stigma that homeless people aren’t people, like they aren’t human. Talking to her was an ‘ah-ha moment’ for me. [I realized,] ‘Wow, there are all these scary things we think about these people, but there are stories behind them.’ It just put the truth in perspective.”

Those ah-ha moments are something every immersion facilitator aims to help their participants realize, and encouraging thoughtful reflection is one of the key components to these trips.

“Reflection is like the connection dots that make those light bulb moments of, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ve never thought about this before.’ Our students ask these big questions, and they’re being challenged,” Meredith said.

Life-Long Lessons of Gratitude

Meredith has been involved with community engagement since 2006 when she joined Rollins as a graduate assistant. In the time since, she has developed several sayings she often quotes to her students, such as “Service is messy and unpredictable,” or “Leadership is messy and unpredictable.” Another idea she often expresses is: “Every person we meet in life, every story that we hear, and every place we go makes us a part of who we are.”

For Meredith, this truth hit home during her first immersion experience. It was January 2007, and she had gone with a group of Rollins students to New Orleans to continue with rebuilding the city after Hurricane Katrina. By the third day, she was covered in insulation and fiberglass and decided she had to take a shower, despite the Arctic temperatures of the water. After the fastest shower of her life, she sat on a porch outside talking with the other trip participants. The conversation started with a few complaints of being tired and cold but then evolved into an organic discussion about life.

“After about forty-five minutes of us shooting the breeze, this student shared with us—kind of out of nowhere—that for a year during middle school, when his parents had gotten a divorce, he and his dad lived out of their car and he was homeless,” Meredith said. “He didn’t know where his next meal was coming from, and he changed schools three or four times.”

However, this student was one of the happiest people she had ever met, Meredith explained. None of the group would have guessed his past, and for him to share that piece of himself brought her own small discomforts into perspective.

“That student reminded me of that idea of gratitude,” she said. “We’re not here to do something to make ourselves feel good. We’re here to support a community that is not getting the support they need from other places. That memory will always stick with me.”

These are the types of experiences that Meredith believes are priceless for students. She will never forget that conversation on the porch, nor will she forget the sense of community she felt when she reconnected with a New Orleans woman whose home she had worked on the year before. Raul will never forget gaining an understanding of the socioeconomic impact of coal mining on the West Virginian woman whose home he helped repair. Courtney remembers being brought to tears by the enthusiastic gratitude of a homeless man in Washington D.C. when she handed him a tray of food.

The long-lasting impact of these moments is part of the overall value of immersions, Raul believes.

“These impact areas, these experiences, can build on each other,” he said. “They take what you’re learning in the classroom and give you some skills and cultural world perception of what’s happening, and you can use that to advance your career as well. That’s why I like calling them experiences not trips, because a trip you just start and end, but an experience is something deeper. It latches onto you, and you can build on that.”

September 26, 2017

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Related Topics

Center for Teaching

• What is Service Learning or Community Engagement?

• Benefits of Community Engagement

Models of Community Engagement Teaching

Ways to integrate community engagement into an existing course.

Community engagement pedagogies, often called “service learning,” are ones that combine learning goals and community service in ways that can enhance both student growth and the common good.  In the words of the National Service Learning Clearinghouse , it is “a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.”  Or, to quote Vanderbilt University’s Janet S. Eyler (winner of the 2003 Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award for Service Learning) and Dwight E. Giles, Jr., it is

“a form of experiential education where learning occurs through a cycle of action and reflection as students. . . seek to achieve real objectives for the community and deeper understanding and skills for themselves. In the process, students link personal and social development with academic and cognitive development. . . experience enhances understanding; understanding leads to more effective action.”

Typically, community engagement is incorporated into a course or series of courses by way of a project that has both learning and community action goals.  This project is designed via collaboration between faculty and community partners, such as non-governmental organizations or government agencies.  The project asks students to apply course content to community-based activities.  This gives students experiential opportunities to learn in real world contexts and develop skills of community engagement, while affording community partners opportunities to address significant needs. Vanderbilt University’s Sharon Shields has argued that service learning is “one of the most significant teaching methodologies gaining momentum on many campuses.” Indeed, when done well, teaching through community engagement benefits students, faculty, communities, and institutions of higher education. Below are some of the benefits that education researchers and practitioners have associated with community engaged teaching.

Student Benefits of Community Engagement

Learning outcomes.

• Positive impact on students’ academic learning
• Improves students’ ability to apply what they have learned in “the real world”
• Positive impact on academic outcomes such as demonstrated complexity of understanding, problem analysis, problem-solving, critical thinking, and cognitive development
• Improved ability to understand complexity and ambiguity

Personal Outcomes

• Greater sense of personal efficacy, personal identity, spiritual growth, and moral development
• Greater interpersonal development, particularly the ability to work well with others, and build leadership and communication skills

Social Outcomes

• Reduced stereotypes and greater inter-cultural understanding
• Improved social responsibility and citizenship skills
• Greater involvement in community service after graduation

Career Development

• Connections with professionals and community members for learning and career opportunities
• Greater academic learning, leadership skills, and personal efficacy can lead to greater opportunity

Relationship with the Institution

• Stronger relationships with faculty
• Greater satisfaction with college
• Improved graduation rates

Faculty Benefits of Community Engagement

• Satisfaction with the quality of student learning
• New avenues for research and publication via new relationships between faculty and community
• Providing networking opportunities with engaged faculty in other disciplines or institutions
• A stronger commitment to one’s research

College and University Benefits of Community Engagement

• Improved institutional commitment to the curriculum
• Improved student retention
• Enhanced community relations

Community Benefits of Community Engagement

• Satisfaction with student participation
• Valuable human resources needed to achieve community goals
• New energy, enthusiasm and perspectives applied to community work
• Enhanced community-university relations

Discipline-Based

Discipline-based model.

In this model, students are expected to have a presence in the community throughout the semester and reflect on their experiences regularly.  In these reflections, they use course content as a basis for their analysis and understanding of the key theoretical, methodological and applied issues at hand.

Problem-Based

Problem-based model.

Students relate to the community much as “consultants” working for a “client.” Students work with community members to understand a particular community problem or need.  This model presumes that the students have or will develop capacities with which to help communities solve a problem.  For example: architecture students might design a park; business students might develop a web site; botany students might identify non-native plants and suggest eradication methods.

Capstone Course

Capstone course model.

These courses are generally designed for majors and minors in a given discipline and are offered almost exclusively to students in their final year. Capstone courses ask students to draw upon the knowledge they have obtained throughout their course work and combine it with relevant service work in the community. The goal of capstone courses is usually either exploring a new topic or synthesizing students’ understanding of their discipline.

Service Internship

Service internship model.

This approach asks students to work as many as 10 to 20 hours a week in a community setting. As in traditional internships, students are charged with producing a body of work that is of value to the community or site. However, unlike traditional internships, service internships have on-going faculty-guided reflection to challenge the students to analyze their new experiences using discipline-based theories.  Service internships focus on reciprocity: the idea that the community and the student benefit equally from the experience.

Undergrad Community-Based Action Research

Action research model.

Community-based action research is similar to an independent study option for the student who is highly experienced in community work.  This approach can be effective with small classes or groups of students.  In this model, students work closely with faculty members to learn research methodology while serving as advocates for communities.  This model assumes that students are or can be trained to be competent in time management and can negotiate diverse communities.

Directed Study Extra Credit

Directed study additional/extra credit model.

Students can register for up to three additional/extra credits in a course by making special arrangements with the instructor to complete an added community-based project.  The course instructor serves as the advisor for the directed study option.  Such arrangements require departmental approval and formal student registration.

There are many ways to integrate community engagement into an existing course, depending on the learning goals, the size of the class, the academic preparation of the students, and the community partnership or project type. Below are some general tips to consider as you begin:

• One-time group service projects: Some course objectives can be met when the entire class is involved in a one-time service project. Arrangements for service projects can be made prior to the semester and included in the syllabus. This model affords the opportunity for faculty and peer interaction because a common service experience is shared. One-time projects have different learning outcomes than ongoing service activities.
• Option within a course: Many faculty begin community engagement with a pilot project. In this design, students have the option to become involved in the community-based project.  A portion of the normal coursework is substituted by the community-based component.  For example, a traditional research paper or group project can be replaced with an experiential research paper or personal journal that documents learning from the service experience.
• Required within a course: In this case, all students are involved in service as an integrated aspect of the course. This expectation must be clearly stated at the first class meeting, on the syllabus, with a clear rationale provided to students as to why the service component is required. Exceptions can be arranged on an individual basis or students can transfer to another class. If all students are involved in service, it is easier to design coursework (i.e., class discussions, writing assignments, exam questions) that integrates the service experience with course objectives. Class sessions can involve agency personnel and site visits. Faculty report that it is easier to build community partnerships if a consistent number of students are involved each semester.
• Action research projects: This type of class involves students in research within the community. The results of the research are communicated to the agency so that it can be used to address community needs. Action research and participatory action research take a significant amount of time to build relationships of trust in the community and identify common research agendas; however, community research projects can support the ongoing research of faculty. Extending this type of research beyond the confines of a semester may be best for all involved.
• Disciplinary capstone projects: Community engagement is an excellent way to build upon students’ cumulative knowledge in a specific discipline and to demonstrate the integration of that knowledge with real life issues. Upper class students can explore ways their disciplinary expertise and competencies translate into addressing community needs. Other community-based classes within the department can prepare the student for this more extensive community-based class.
• Multiple course projects :  Community engagement projects with one or more partners may span different courses in the same semester or multiple courses over a year or longer.  These projects must be broad enough to meet the learning goals of multiple courses over time, and because of this they may have a cumulative impact on both student learning and community development that is robust.  Such projects may be particularly suited to course clusters or learning communities within or across disciplines, or course sequences, say, within a major, that build student capacity towards advanced learning and community action goals.

Other CFT Guides About Community Engagement Pedagogies

• A Word on Nomenclature
• Best Practices in Community Engaged Teaching
• Community Engaged Teaching Step by Step
• Challenges and Opportunities of Community Engaged Teaching
• Additional Resources

Teaching Guides

• Online Course Development Resources
• Principles & Frameworks
• Pedagogies & Strategies
• Reflecting & Assessing
• Challenges & Opportunities
• Populations & Contexts

Quick Links

• Services for Departments and Schools
• Examples of Online Instructional Modules

How to Write the Community Essay: Complete Guide + Examples

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Step 1: Decide What Community to Write About
• Step 2: The BEABIES Exercise
• Step 3: Pick a Structure (Narrative or Montage)
• Step 4: Write a Draft!

Introduction

On the Common Application, a number of colleges have begun to require that students respond to a supplemental essay question that sounds something like this:

Tell us a bit more about a community you are a part of.

Here is the exact wording from a few schools:

University of Michigan: “Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong, and describe that community and your place within it. (250 words)”

Duke University: “We seek a talented, engaged student body that embodies the wide range of human experience; we believe that the diversity of our students makes our community stronger. If you'd like to share a perspective you bring or experiences you've had to help us understand you better—perhaps related to a community you belong to, your sexual orientation or gender identity, or your family or cultural background—we encourage you to do so. Real people are reading your application, and we want to do our best to understand and appreciate the real people applying. (250 words)

(Old) Brown University: “Tell us about a place or community you call home. How has it shaped your perspective? (250 words)

I love this essay question. 

Why? Because, while this essay is largely asking about your place within that community, it is a great opportunity to share more about you, and how you will most likely engage with that community (or other communities) on your future college campus.

It’s a chance to say: “Here’s how I connect with folks in this community. And if accepted to your college, I’ll probably be active in getting involved with that same community and others on your college campus.”

And colleges want students who are going to be active in engaging with their community.

How to Write The Community Essay

Step 1: decide what community you want to write about.

How? This may seem obvious, but it can be really helpful to first brainstorm the communities you’re already a part of. 

Here’s how:

Create a “communities” chart by listing all the communities you’re a part of. Keep in mind that communities can be defined by...

Place: groups of people who live/work/play near one another

Action: groups of people who create change in the world by building, doing, or solving something together (Examples: Black Lives Matter, Girls Who Code, March for Our Lives)

Interest: groups of people coming together based on shared interest, experience, or expertise

Circumstance: groups of people brought together either by chance or external events/situations

Use four columns in your chart, like this. 

Your turn. 

What communities are you a part of? 

Spend 5-10 minutes making a list of as many as you can think of. 

In fact, here’s a simple GoogleDoc you can download and fill in right now.

Once you’ve completed that exercise for several of the communities you are a part of, you might start to see one community seems to be the most obvious one to write about. 

Go with the one that you feel gives the best chance to help you share more about yourself.

Step 2: Use the BEABIES exercise to generate your essay content

Once you’ve chosen a community or two, map out your content using the BEABIES Exercise . That exercise asks:

What did you actually do in that community? (Tip: use active verbs like “organized” and “managed” to clarify your responsibilities).

What kinds of problems did you solve (personally, locally, or globally)?

What specific impact did you have?

What did you learn (skills, qualities, values)? 

How did you apply the lessons you learned in and outside of that community?

Don’t skip that step. It’s important.

Step 3: Pick a structure (Narrative or Montage)

The Narrative Structure . This structure works well for students who have faced a challenge in this community. Otherwise, the Montage Structure works well.

Consider answering these three questions in your essay if you choose the Narrative Structure: 

What challenge did you face?

What did you do about it? 

What did you learn?

Here’s an example of a narrative “community” essay based on a challenge that tackles those three questions, roughly in order:

Community Essay Example: East Meets West

I look around my room, dimly lit by an orange light. On my desk, a framed picture of an Asian family beaming their smiles, buried among US history textbooks and The Great Gatsby. A Korean ballad streams from two tiny computer speakers. Pamphlets of American colleges scattered on the floor. A cold December wind wafts a strange infusion of ramen and leftover pizza. On the wall in the far back, a Korean flag hangs besides a Led Zeppelin poster. Do I consider myself Korean or American? A few years back, I would have replied: “Neither.” The frustrating moments of miscommunication, the stifling homesickness, and the impossible dilemma of deciding between the Korean or American table in the dining hall, all fueled my identity crisis. Standing in the “Foreign Passports” section at JFK, I have always felt out of place. Sure, I held a Korean passport in my hands, and I loved kimchi and Yuna Kim and knew the Korean Anthem by heart. But I also loved macaroni and cheese and LeBron. Deep inside, I feared I’d labeled by my airport customs category: a foreigner everywhere. This ambiguity, however, has granted me the opportunity to absorb the best of both worlds. Look at my dorm room. This mélange of cultures in my East-meets-West room embodies the diversity that characterizes my international student life. I’ve learned to accept my “ambiguity” as “diversity,” as a third-culture student embracing both identities. Do I consider myself Korean or American? Now, I can proudly answer: “Both.” — — —

(250 words)

While this author doesn’t go into too much depth on the “What did you do about it?” question named above, we do get a sense of the challenge he faced and what he learned.

For more on how to use the narrative structure, check out the free guide to writing the personal statement.

The Montage Structure. This is another potential structure, often times great for essays that don’t necessarily focus on a particular challenge. 

Here’s a great example:

Community Essay Example: Storytellers

Storytellers (Montage Structure)

I belong to a community of storytellers. Throughout my childhood, my mother and I spent countless hours immersed in the magical land of bedtime stories. We took daring adventures and explored far away lands. Imagination ran wild, characters came to life, and I became acquainted with heroes and lessons that continue to inspire me today. It was a ritual that I will never forget. In school I met many other storytellers­­­­—teachers, coaches, and fellow students whose stories taught me valuable lessons and enabled me to share stories of my own. My stories took shape through my involvement with theatre. I have learned that telling stories can be just as powerful as hearing them. When I tell a story, I can shape the world I live in and share my deepest emotions with the audience. This is exactly why I love theatre so much. The audience can relate to the story in many of the same powerful ways that I do. I love to perform with my theatre class to entertain and educate young audiences throughout my community. To tell our stories, we travel to elementary and middle schools performing plays that help educate younger students of the dangers of drugs, alcohol, and bullying. As storytellers, we aim to touch lives and better the world around us through our stories. — — —

(219 words)

To write this essay, I recommend the “uncommon connections” exercise.

The Uncommon Connections Exercise

First: Use the Values Exercise at this link to brainstorm predictable values that other students might describe in their essay and then vow not to use those values. 

Second : Identify 3-4 uncommon connections (values other students would be unlikely to think of) and give an example of each.

Third : Describe one example per paragraph, perhaps in chronological order. 

Another idea: It’s also possible to combine the narrative and montage structures by describing a challenge WHILE also describing a range of values and lessons. 

Here’s an example that does this:

Community Essay Example: The Pumpkin House (plus Ethan's analysis)

The Pumpkin House (Narrative + Montage Combo Structure)

I was raised in “The Pumpkin House.” Every Autumn, on the lawn between the sidewalk and the road, grows our pumpkin. Every summer, we procure seeds from giant pumpkins and plant them in this strip of land. Every fall, the pumpkin grows to be giant. This annual ritual became well known in the community and became the defining feature of our already quirky house. The pumpkin was not just a pumpkin, but a catalyst to creating interactions and community. Conversations often start with “aren’t you the girl in the pumpkin house?” My English teacher knew about our pumpkin and our chickens. His curiosity and weekly updates about the pumpkin helped us connect.

The author touches on the values of family and ritual in the first few sentences. She then mentions the word “community” explicitly, which clearly connects the essay to the  prompt. In the second paragraph she mentions the value of connection.

One year, we found our pumpkin splattered across the street. We were devastated; the pumpkin was part of our identity. Word spread, and people came to our house to share in our dismay. Clearly, that pumpkin enriched our life and the entire neighborhoods’.

Here she introduces the problem. Then she raises the stakes: the pumpkin was part of her family’s identity as well as that of the community. 

The next morning, our patch contained twelve new pumpkins. Anonymous neighbors left these, plus, a truly gigantic 200 lb. pumpkin on our doorstep.

Describing the neighborhood’s response offers a vivid example of what makes for a great community.

Growing up, the pumpkin challenged me as I wasn’t always comfortable being the center of attention. But in retrospect, I realize that there’s a bit of magic in growing something from a seed and tending it in public. I witnessed how this act of sharing creates authentic community spirit. I wouldn’t be surprised if some day I started my own form of quirky pumpkin growing and reap the benefit of true community.

The author makes another uncommon connection in her conclusion with the unexpected idea that  “the pumpkin challenged [her].” She then uses beautiful language to reflect on the lessons she learned: “there’s a bit of magic in growing something from a seed and tending it in public.” 

Step 4: Write a first draft!

It sometimes helps to outline and draft one or two different essays on different activities, just to see which community might end up being a better topic for your essay. 

Not sure? Share your drafts with a friend or teacher and ask this question:

Which of these essays tells you more about me/my core values, helps me stand out, and shows that I’ll engage actively with other communities in college.

Happy writing.

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How to Write the Community Essay – Guide with Examples (2023-24)

September 6, 2023

Students applying to college this year will inevitably confront the community essay. In fact, most students will end up responding to several community essay prompts for different schools. For this reason, you should know more than simply how to approach the community essay as a genre. Rather, you will want to learn how to decipher the nuances of each particular prompt, in order to adapt your response appropriately. In this article, we’ll show you how to do just that, through several community essay examples. These examples will also demonstrate how to avoid cliché and make the community essay authentically and convincingly your own.

Emphasis on Community

Do keep in mind that inherent in the word “community” is the idea of multiple people. The personal statement already provides you with a chance to tell the college admissions committee about yourself as an individual. The community essay, however, suggests that you depict yourself among others. You can use this opportunity to your advantage by showing off interpersonal skills, for example. Or, perhaps you wish to relate a moment that forged important relationships. This in turn will indicate what kind of connections you’ll make in the classroom with college peers and professors.

Apart from comprising numerous people, a community can appear in many shapes and sizes. It could be as small as a volleyball team, or as large as a diaspora. It could fill a town soup kitchen, or spread across five boroughs. In fact, due to the internet, certain communities today don’t even require a physical place to congregate. Communities can form around a shared identity, shared place, shared hobby, shared ideology, or shared call to action. They can even arise due to a shared yet unforeseen circumstance.

What is the Community Essay All About?             

In a nutshell, the community essay should exhibit three things:

• An aspect of yourself, 2. in the context of a community you belonged to, and 3. how this experience may shape your contribution to the community you’ll join in college.

It may look like a fairly simple equation: 1 + 2 = 3. However, each college will word their community essay prompt differently, so it’s important to look out for additional variables. One college may use the community essay as a way to glimpse your core values. Another may use the essay to understand how you would add to diversity on campus. Some may let you decide in which direction to take it—and there are many ways to go!

To get a better idea of how the prompts differ, let’s take a look at some real community essay prompts from the current admission cycle.

Sample 2023-2024 Community Essay Prompts

1) brown university.

“Students entering Brown often find that making their home on College Hill naturally invites reflection on where they came from. Share how an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you, and what unique contributions this might allow you to make to the Brown community. (200-250 words)”

A close reading of this prompt shows that Brown puts particular emphasis on place. They do this by using the words “home,” “College Hill,” and “where they came from.” Thus, Brown invites writers to think about community through the prism of place. They also emphasize the idea of personal growth or change, through the words “inspired or challenged you.” Therefore, Brown wishes to see how the place you grew up in has affected you. And, they want to know how you in turn will affect their college community.

“NYU was founded on the belief that a student’s identity should not dictate the ability for them to access higher education. That sense of opportunity for all students, of all backgrounds, remains a part of who we are today and a critical part of what makes us a world-class university. Our community embraces diversity, in all its forms, as a cornerstone of the NYU experience.

We would like to better understand how your experiences would help us to shape and grow our diverse community. Please respond in 250 words or less.”

Here, NYU places an emphasis on students’ “identity,” “backgrounds,” and “diversity,” rather than any physical place. (For some students, place may be tied up in those ideas.) Furthermore, while NYU doesn’t ask specifically how identity has changed the essay writer, they do ask about your “experience.” Take this to mean that you can still recount a specific moment, or several moments, that work to portray your particular background. You should also try to link your story with NYU’s values of inclusivity and opportunity.

3) University of Washington

“Our families and communities often define us and our individual worlds. Community might refer to your cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood or school, sports team or club, co-workers, etc. Describe the world you come from and how you, as a product of it, might add to the diversity of the UW. (300 words max) Tip: Keep in mind that the UW strives to create a community of students richly diverse in cultural backgrounds, experiences, values and viewpoints.”

UW ’s community essay prompt may look the most approachable, for they help define the idea of community. You’ll notice that most of their examples (“families,” “cultural group, extended family, religious group, neighborhood”…) place an emphasis on people. This may clue you in on their desire to see the relationships you’ve made. At the same time, UW uses the words “individual” and “richly diverse.” They, like NYU, wish to see how you fit in and stand out, in order to boost campus diversity.

Writing Your First Community Essay

Begin by picking which community essay you’ll write first. (For practical reasons, you’ll probably want to go with whichever one is due earliest.) Spend time doing a close reading of the prompt, as we’ve done above. Underline key words. Try to interpret exactly what the prompt is asking through these keywords.

Next, brainstorm. I recommend doing this on a blank piece of paper with a pencil. Across the top, make a row of headings. These might be the communities you’re a part of, or the components that make up your identity. Then, jot down descriptive words underneath in each column—whatever comes to you. These words may invoke people and experiences you had with them, feelings, moments of growth, lessons learned, values developed, etc. Now, narrow in on the idea that offers the richest material and that corresponds fully with the prompt.

Lastly, write! You’ll definitely want to describe real moments, in vivid detail. This will keep your essay original, and help you avoid cliché. However, you’ll need to summarize the experience and answer the prompt succinctly, so don’t stray too far into storytelling mode.

How To Adapt Your Community Essay

Once your first essay is complete, you’ll need to adapt it to the other colleges involving community essays on your list. Again, you’ll want to turn to the prompt for a close reading, and recognize what makes this prompt different from the last. For example, let’s say you’ve written your essay for UW about belonging to your swim team, and how the sports dynamics shaped you. Adapting that essay to Brown’s prompt could involve more of a focus on place. You may ask yourself, how was my swim team in Alaska different than the swim teams we competed against in other states?

Once you’ve adapted the content, you’ll also want to adapt the wording to mimic the prompt. For example, let’s say your UW essay states, “Thinking back to my years in the pool…” As you adapt this essay to Brown’s prompt, you may notice that Brown uses the word “reflection.” Therefore, you might change this sentence to “Reflecting back on my years in the pool…” While this change is minute, it cleverly signals to the reader that you’ve paid attention to the prompt, and are giving that school your full attention.

What to Avoid When Writing the Community Essay  

• Avoid cliché. Some students worry that their idea is cliché, or worse, that their background or identity is cliché. However, what makes an essay cliché is not the content, but the way the content is conveyed. This is where your voice and your descriptions become essential.
• Avoid giving too many examples. Stick to one community, and one or two anecdotes arising from that community that allow you to answer the prompt fully.
• Don’t exaggerate or twist facts. Sometimes students feel they must make themselves sound more “diverse” than they feel they are. Luckily, diversity is not a feeling. Likewise, diversity does not simply refer to one’s heritage. If the prompt is asking about your identity or background, you can show the originality of your experiences through your actions and your thinking.

Community Essay Examples and Analysis

Brown university community essay example.

I used to hate the NYC subway. I’ve taken it since I was six, going up and down Manhattan, to and from school. By high school, it was a daily nightmare. Spending so much time underground, underneath fluorescent lighting, squashed inside a rickety, rocking train car among strangers, some of whom wanted to talk about conspiracy theories, others who had bedbugs or B.O., or who manspread across two seats, or bickered—it wore me out. The challenge of going anywhere seemed absurd. I dreaded the claustrophobia and disgruntlement.

Yet the subway also inspired my understanding of community. I will never forget the morning I saw a man, several seats away, slide out of his seat and hit the floor. The thump shocked everyone to attention. What we noticed: he appeared drunk, possibly homeless. I was digesting this when a second man got up and, through a sort of awkward embrace, heaved the first man back into his seat. The rest of us had stuck to subway social codes: don’t step out of line. Yet this second man’s silent actions spoke loudly. They said, “I care.”

That day I realized I belong to a group of strangers. What holds us together is our transience, our vulnerabilities, and a willingness to assist. This community is not perfect but one in motion, a perpetual work-in-progress. Now I make it my aim to hold others up. I plan to contribute to the Brown community by helping fellow students and strangers in moments of precariousness.    

Brown University Community Essay Example Analysis

Here the student finds an original way to write about where they come from. The subway is not their home, yet it remains integral to ideas of belonging. The student shows how a community can be built between strangers, in their responsibility toward each other. The student succeeds at incorporating key words from the prompt (“challenge,” “inspired” “Brown community,” “contribute”) into their community essay.

UW Community Essay Example

I grew up in Hawaii, a world bound by water and rich in diversity. In school we learned that this sacred land was invaded, first by Captain Cook, then by missionaries, whalers, traders, plantation owners, and the U.S. government. My parents became part of this problematic takeover when they moved here in the 90s. The first community we knew was our church congregation. At the beginning of mass, we shook hands with our neighbors. We held hands again when we sang the Lord’s Prayer. I didn’t realize our church wasn’t “normal” until our diocese was informed that we had to stop dancing hula and singing Hawaiian hymns. The order came from the Pope himself.

Eventually, I lost faith in God and organized institutions. I thought the banning of hula—an ancient and pure form of expression—seemed medieval, ignorant, and unfair, given that the Hawaiian religion had already been stamped out. I felt a lack of community and a distrust for any place in which I might find one. As a postcolonial inhabitant, I could never belong to the Hawaiian culture, no matter how much I valued it. Then, I was shocked to learn that Queen Ka’ahumanu herself had eliminated the Kapu system, a strict code of conduct in which women were inferior to men. Next went the Hawaiian religion. Queen Ka’ahumanu burned all the temples before turning to Christianity, hoping this religion would offer better opportunities for her people.

Community Essay (Continued)

I’m not sure what to make of this history. Should I view Queen Ka’ahumanu as a feminist hero, or another failure in her islands’ tragedy? Nothing is black and white about her story, but she did what she thought was beneficial to her people, regardless of tradition. From her story, I’ve learned to accept complexity. I can disagree with institutionalized religion while still believing in my neighbors. I am a product of this place and their presence. At UW, I plan to add to campus diversity through my experience, knowing that diversity comes with contradictions and complications, all of which should be approached with an open and informed mind.

UW Community Essay Example Analysis

This student also manages to weave in words from the prompt (“family,” “community,” “world,” “product of it,” “add to the diversity,” etc.). Moreover, the student picks one of the examples of community mentioned in the prompt, (namely, a religious group,) and deepens their answer by addressing the complexity inherent in the community they’ve been involved in. While the student displays an inner turmoil about their identity and participation, they find a way to show how they’d contribute to an open-minded campus through their values and intellectual rigor.

What’s Next

For more on supplemental essays and essay writing guides, check out the following articles:

• How to Write the Why This Major Essay + Example
• How to Write the Overcoming Challenges Essay + Example
• How to Start a College Essay – 12 Techniques and Tips
• College Essay

Kaylen Baker

With a BA in Literary Studies from Middlebury College, an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, and a Master’s in Translation from Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Kaylen has been working with students on their writing for over five years. Previously, Kaylen taught a fiction course for high school students as part of Columbia Artists/Teachers, and served as an English Language Assistant for the French National Department of Education. Kaylen is an experienced writer/translator whose work has been featured in Los Angeles Review, Hybrid, San Francisco Bay Guardian, France Today, and Honolulu Weekly, among others.

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Supporting Critical Reflection in Community-Engaged Learning

Compiled by Kathryn Van Zanen, Engaged Learning Graduate Consultant

Reflection is a critical component of community-engaged courses and programs. Reflection supports meaning-making, and regular reflection activities help students connect their community engagement experience to course or program learning objectives. Studies show that reflection can strengthen critical thinking 1 and enhance student development on measures of civic values and personal growth . 2     Reflection can come in many forms, but it’s most advantageous when it’s ongoing. Continuous, connected, challenging, and contextualized reflection helps students negotiate the stages of community engagement and supports them to prepare for and process their experiences. 3

The resources below offer guidance, examples and further reading around reflection. We would be glad to work with you to incorporate any of these resources into your community-engaged efforts.

• Contact us at  [email protected] or if you have any questions about these resources.
• Use our  Support Request Form  to request a consultation or workshop.  
• Join our  Academic Partner mailing list  to stay informed about upcoming events and opportunities!

How can I promote reflection with my students?

• Make reflection a regular– and rewarded– part of your course. You don’t have to grade the quality of students’ reflections, but giving them credit for doing it signals how important reflection is for their learning and your course objectives.
• Give feedback on student reflections, especially at the early stages. Reflection helps you to collect data about your students’ experiences and prompt them to deepen their thinking. Learn more about assessing reflection from Bradley (1995) and IUPUI.
• Reflect in a variety of ways. Invite multiple modes of reflection for students, from text to audio to video to artistic representation, and make time for students to reflect together and with you (Mabry 1998). The Northwest Service Academy Toolkit offers a wide range of possible activities organized by time commitment, while Clemson University organizes activities by the kind of learning they promote.
• Talk to students about why reflection is important. Many of the reflection models and resource lists linked below provide language for talking to students about why reflection matters; modeling reflective practices in your instructor role also underscores their value for your students. What are you learning from community engagement?

Additional Resources

• Peruse excerpts from the instructor manual or use specific reflection prompts that target personal, civic, and academic learning, respectively.
• Brock University’s Center for Pedagogical Innovation has a helpful website that compiles various reflection models (including DEAL) and assignment formats.
• Mine the ORID Model for questions to guide students from observation to integration of new knowledge and perspectives, plus tips for aligning reflection activities with your learning goals.
• Explore how to integrate reflection throughout your course or design a course-specific reflection project . 
• Explore our resources on Assessing Student Learning

What are some examples of reflection activities I can use?

Explore a range of reflection activities that can be used in many different ways, organized from shortest to longest: 

Reflection Guidebook, Santa Monica College This 5-page piece explains the basics of reflection and provides brief descriptions of many different kinds of reflection, as well as tips on what to consider as you determine what fits your course and learning goals.

Reflection toolkit, Northwest Service Academy This toolkit, designed for leaders facilitating reflection for the first time, explains what reflection is and why it’s important, and provides guidance for leading a variety of reflection activities. The activities are categorized by time commitment.

Reflection resources, Clemson University A collection of 28 different reflection activities for instructors, organized by category: reflection activities for prior knowledge (to use before engagement), cognition, metacognition, competency, and personal growth & change. Activities are marked for formative and graded, summative assessment.

Reflection activities: Service-Learning’s not-so-secret weapon , Katie Halcrow This 13-page piece outlines 33 different reflection activities for classroom use, grouped by “Reflection Activities In and Out of Class,” “Rigorous Academic Links,” and “Presenting Culmination of Experience.” The list includes group work, written activities, discussion activities, artwork, and ways to showcase students’ work.

Service-Learning Reflection Journal, Purdue University This student-facing handbook includes an initial assessment scale, pre-service project planning documents, a daily or weekly journal template, a final reflection assignment prompt, and a post-assessment.

International Service-Learning Reflection Journal, Purdue University This handbook, explicitly directed to students studying abroad, includes a pre-entry reflection and assignment, public affairs scale, daily/weekly journal template, reflective paper prompt, re-entry reflection and assignment, and a post-assessment public affairs scale.

What are some articles I can explore for further reading?

Below is a list of peer-reviewed articles about reflection (most recent first) 

Reflective Practice, Campus Compact

An extensive bibliography with links to peer-reviewed research on reflective practice in community-engaged learning.

Richard, D., Keen, C., Hatcher, J.A., and Pease, H. A. (2016). Pathways to Adult Civic Engagement: Benefits of Reflection and Dialogue across Difference in Higher Education Service-Learning Programs . Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 23(1), 60-74.

Drawing from a 30-campus, 1000+ participant dataset, Richard et al. explore the relationship between college engagement experiences and civic outcomes after college. They found that “dialogue with others across difference was the strongest predictor of cultivating civic outcomes after college. In addition, both structured and informal reflection independently contributed to civic outcomes (i.e., civic-mindedness, voluntary action, civic action).”

van Goethem, A., van Hoof, A., Orobio de Castro, B., Van Aken, M., & Hart, D. (2014). The role of reflection in the effects of community service on adolescent development: a meta-analysis. Child development, 85(6), 2114–2130. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12274

This meta-analysis of 49 studies finds again that reflection is essential to the positive academic, personal, social, and civic outcomes of service-learning. Positive effects of service-learning increased with greater reflection and particularly reflection on academic content.

Ash S.L., Clayton P.H. (2004). The Articulated Learning: An Approach to Guided Reflection and Assessment . Innovative Higher Education 29(2), 137–54.

The academic article that originated the DEAL reflection framework, this text describes the Articulated Learning framework’s three main components: description of an experience, analysis in accordance with relevant learning categories, and articulation of learning outcomes. It also considers applications for the framework in research and faculty development.

Hatcher, J.A, Bringle, R.G, & Muthiah, R. (2004). Designing effective reflection: What matters to service learning? Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 11(1), 38-46.

This study, based on survey responses of undergraduate students, found that successful courses included reflection activities that (a) clarified personal values, (b) were a regular part of the course, and (c) were structured with clear guidelines and directions. The paper also discusses implications for practice.

Eyler J. (2002). Reflection: Linking Service and Learning—Linking Students and Communities . Journal of Social Issues, 58(3), 517–34.

This article reviews research on reflection practices in service-learning and collects concrete suggestions for attaining service-learning learning goals. It includes the reflection map from Eyler (2001) that can guide faculty to support students in multiple dimensions of reflection, including reflecting alone, with classmates, and with partners as well as before, during, and after service. 

Eyler, J. (2001). Creating Your Reflection Map . In M. Canada (ed. ) Service-learning: Practical advice and models. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, New Directions for Higher Education, 2001(114), 35–43.

This piece outlines the how and why or reflection in a guide to using the reflection map, a “tool to help practitioners organize their thinking about integrating continuous reflective processes into their service-learning practice.” The tool invites faculty to think about reflection in a matrix of time and interaction: reflecting alone, with classmates, and with partners, as well as before, during, and after service. 

Bringle, R.G. and J.A. Hatcher (1999). Reflection in Service Learning: Making Meaning of Experience . Educational Horizons, Summer, 179-185.

This brief article offers an easy introduction to service-learning, including narrative about the philosophical basis for reflection, types of reflection for service learning, assessing reflection, and consequences of reflection.

References:

1. Eyler, J., & Giles Jr., D.E. (1999). Where’s the Learning in Service-Learning? San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 2. Ash, S.L.; Clayton, P.H.; Atkinson, M.P. (2005). Integrating Reflection and Assessment to Capture and Improve Student Learning. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 11(2), 49-60. 3. Eyler, J., Giles Jr., D.E., and Schmiede, A. (1996). A Practitioner’s Guide to Reflection in Service-Learning: Student Voices and Reflections. Vanderbilt University.

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Community Immersion Essay

Community Immersion : Olympia Downtown District

Community Immersion: Olympia Downtown District Kristen Doyle University of Southern California Professor Stacy Kratz May 25th, 2016 There is significant variation in how communities are defined in our world. The dominate themes found relate communities to space, people, interaction, and shared identity (Netting, Kettner, McMurtry, &Thomas, 2012). Understanding communities allows social workers to partner with community members and leaders in order to identify root-causes of social

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Learning English in The United States

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The linguistic landscape, cultural immersion experience, implications and further exploration.

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Joseph Kao traces his sense of altruism and environmental mission back to the years he spent living in Taiwan with his grandmother, a refugee from the Chinese Communist Revolution.

“She told me stories about how her dad, a doctor, risked his life to save the people in their town by staying behind to let others escape first,” says Kao. “He died because of his sense of duty as a doctor. Stories like that really instilled in me a sense of altruism.”

Besides, he adds, “it happens to be built into my Chinese name as well — Renheng “仁恆” where Ren (or “仁”) means altruism and Heng (“恆”) means perpetuity.” Kao’s grandmother survived her exile by collecting recyclables and still-functional castoffs from the streets, “converting a lot of the resources that people consider trash into survival tools.” Post-war, she continued recycling with her son and young grandson in Taiwan, and “that’s why I’m focusing my startup on this idea of circular economies.”

Your careers at Meta and Apple seemed to be going well. What convinced you to apply to the Stanford MSx Program?

Apple was great for four years because I was always on the frontier of technology innovation. I was working on the Apple Vision Pro lens module. I was the first material scientist brought into the smart glasses program and grew my team to 10 people in less than two years. But it’s a big organization, and I was eager to drive more impact and innovation in a new venture where I can contribute my material science expertise in a more efficient way.

You arrived at Stanford GSB hoping to launch a bioplastics startup to disrupt the packaging industry. How have your goals evolved since then?

My parents were chemists, and my interest in garbage and trash motivated me to study material science. My PhD work was focused on biodegradable plastics. But while I was at Apple, and during the pandemic, I learned more about recycling.

What did you learn?

Quote “I want to build a corporate culture that’s consistent with my and my team’s core values.”

I saw how my garbage collector mixed the recyclables and the trash when they picked it up. in my community. I called the local recycling company and learned that only about 5-10% of what we put into our recycling bin is really recycled. That’s why I started this recycling group during the pandemic. I also started a mission to find the local recycling center and work with the community to collect and transfer recyclables to that center, including plastics, glass, and other household recyclables.

What got you interested in battery recycling?

Because of my plastics background, I was introduced to Apple’s zero-waste initiatives. One of the big things they were thinking about was how to recycle the band for the Apple Watch. Apple wants to make sure they’re using 100% recycled materials by 2030. Another initiative I was lucky to be part of is e-waste recycling, which provides consumers with the option to recycle their electronics. That’s where I got intrigued by this field of battery recycling.

So now you imagine building a business around that circular system?

In the past year, I’ve looked into all the verticals — from textiles to e-waste to EV batteries — and the startup I’m building is focused on reusing and giving a second life to EV batteries. That’s where I see a lot of my core values, technical expertise, and passion start to come together.

Should companies play a larger role in environmental leadership?

Some companies may not have the resources to do this work, but the big players can drive the willingness to buy those products with sustainable materials and technologies. Many companies complain that it’s impossible to achieve the desired financial returns and environmental impacts simultaneously. I don’t buy that. There’s always a solution if you look deep and hard.

Name three specific things an average person can do to cultivate a recycling culture.

I always advocate for the three Rs of circular economies — recycle, reduce, and reuse. Many people have this idea that recycling is always the best thing to do, but also consider reducing and reusing your waste. I created a forum in a chat group where people could, for example, exchange and upcycle materials. Check those platforms because maybe there’s someone interested in using your waste. The second thing is reducing. You don’t always have to buy new things. You can find second-hand products as long as they function. That’s what I learned during my upbringing in Taiwan. The third thing is finding the right recycling channel. No one sorts or cares about where the recyclables are going. If you can help do the sorting right at the source, then we can create the circularity of all kinds of materials.

How did Stanford GSB help you reach your goals?

I’ve learned to view problems from the consumer and business perspective. How do you communicate to consumers, and how do you design a tool to help them recycle more easily? As an engineer, I didn’t think much about that. Communication matters. My marketing and consumer behavior classes convinced me that more than 80-90% of Americans want to recycle, but it’s just not convenient to do so. They don’t know what to do. So, when you build a platform to help people recycle, it’s critical to embed convenience and education in your business model. Business school also showed me how to evaluate the financials.

Are there any specific classes at the GSB that proved particularly influential?

Managing Growing Enterprises with David Dodson. A privilege of being a founder or leader in a small growing startup is that you get to shape the culture and hire, and sometimes even fire, the right people to preserve that culture. Professor Dodson brought in amazing guests, and he himself is a leader at building all kinds of companies. We spent almost half a quarter just focusing on how to hire the right people to make sure the company culture aligns with your values. That’s definitely the kind of manager and leader I want to become.

You’ve taken silent meditation retreats in Thailand, Bali, and Mongolia. Why do those appeal to you?

My parents are Buddhists, and in Taiwan the silent retreat is very popular. I was forced to do it when I was young, but it grew on me over the years. As I get older and gain more responsibilities in this materialistic world, it’s important to focus on what I really want to accomplish. That goes back to why I’m here at Stanford. A job in big tech is great. It can be fulfilling, and you get paid well. But what do you want to contribute to the world? I can listen to my inner voice through meditation at these silent retreats to learn more about myself. At one point, I was confused about why I existed in the world. Self-reflection made me come back to school and do something that matters.

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Category : Moscow Oblast

Federal subjects of the Russian Federation:

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Authority file   VIAF ID: GND ID: Library of Congress authority ID: NL CR AUT ID: National Library of Israel ID (old): National Library of Israel J9U ID: OpenStreetMap relation ID: Subcategories This category has the following 23 subcategories, out of 23 total. Aerial photographs of Moscow Oblast ‎ (6 C, 254 F) Valued images of Moscow Oblast ‎ (16 F) Featured pictures of Moscow Oblast ‎ (11 F) Quality images of Moscow Oblast ‎ (11 C, 299 F) Alabino proving ground ‎ (16 C, 8 F) Courts in Moscow Oblast ‎ (1 F) Culture of Moscow Oblast ‎ (49 C, 4 F) Documents of Moscow Oblast ‎ (1 C, 3 F) Economy of Moscow Oblast ‎ (22 C, 8 F) Geography of Moscow Oblast ‎ (17 C, 2 F) History of Moscow Oblast ‎ (31 C, 9 F) Information graphics of Moscow Oblast ‎ (1 C, 12 F) Medicine in Moscow Oblast ‎ (3 C, 20 F) Nature of Moscow Oblast ‎ (48 C, 98 F) Objects in Moscow Oblast ‎ (7 C, 1 F) People of Moscow Oblast ‎ (60 C, 62 F) Police in Moscow Oblast ‎ (2 C, 7 F) Politics of Moscow Oblast ‎ (10 C) Science in Moscow Oblast ‎ (4 C) Society of Moscow Oblast ‎ (5 C) Unidentified locations in Moscow Oblast ‎ (56 F) Videos from Moscow Oblast ‎ (9 C, 1 F) Views of Moscow Oblast ‎ (15 C, 7 F) Media in category "Moscow Oblast" The following 200 files are in this category, out of 595 total. Oblasts of Russia Central Federal District Central economic region Things named after Moscow Uses of Wikidata Infobox Uses of Wikidata Infobox with maps Pages with coordinates Navigation menu More From Forbes Student ambassadors can help you write your college admissions essays. Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Student ambassadors love their school and hope you will, too. If you can’t visit campus, you can still get a feel for college life through virtual events—sometimes hosted by students who were in your shoes not long ago. Student ambassadors are current students who have volunteered to meet with applicants to share what they know and love about their school. Many colleges ask applicants to write essays explaining exactly why they want to attend not just any college, but their school in particular. However, once you are up to your ears in essay writing, you may start to feel that schools are blurring together and you are having a hard time telling Haverford from Harvard. Student ambassadors can help. Student ambassadors will not write your application essays for you. But in listening to and talking with current students, you may find that you finally “get it”: you understand at last why Duke thinks it’s important for first-year undergraduates to live together on one campus, or why Brown’s Open Curriculum does not simply mean you can take whatever classes you want. The personal insights student ambassadors share can help you craft college-specific supplemental essays that shine with detailed examples of why you believe you are a great fit for a particular school. Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024 Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, who are student ambassadors. Student ambassadors are usually current students who have volunteered to present information about their schools and share what they know about living and learning at their college. Occasionally they are paid, but they are always there because they love their school and would like to share their enthusiasm and their experience with prospective applicants. How To Connect With A Student Ambassador There are different ways to take advantage of the chance to talk with a current student. Some schools post a link you can use to send a question to a student ambassador at any time. Some schools offer open Q&A sessions. New York University invites you to “hit our student ambassadors with your questions in a live Q&A.” Tufts University ’s “Jumbo Chats (for prospective students only) offer an opportunity to learn directly from student experiences at Tufts, and ask questions you may not want to ask in a larger forum.” Later in the admissions cycle, some schools may host call-ins, which are times when students who are considering applying or accepting an offer of admission can call in and speak with a student ambassador. The summer and early fall before application deadlines pick up is an especially valuable time to listen in on a webinar or Q&A session featuring student ambassadors. It’s a great time to ask current students, “Why did you choose this college?” You can ask what they expected of their school and whether that was in fact what they found. You might ask what they know now that they wish they understood as an applicant. Just remember that student ambassadors are there to answer questions about their own experience. They cannot answer a technical question, such as, “Can I be admitted to Physics 1001 even though I got 3 in AP Calc BC?” How Connecting With A Student Ambassador Can Help If you’re having difficulty telling one college from another on the basis of the websites alone, talking to someone close to your own age can help bring the student experience to life. Listening to a student ambassador’s experience may assure you that a first-year writing seminar is in fact an exciting introduction to a new field of study, or clarify the meaning of a term like “collegewide requirements.” Some colleges schedule virtual events with student ambassadors to give prospective students an overview of large topics. For example, student ambassadors from Cornell University’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences offered Zoom webinars on the following topics in July and August 2024: Why I Chose Cornell Innovative Curriculum Beyond the Classroom These could be excellent topics to cover in the school-specific essay required by Cornell. As Cornell’s virtual events page explains, “Students can articulate their fit and interest in the College of Arts & Sciences through the Cornell-specific supplemental essay in their application.” That essay is unusually long: 650 words. Clearly, Cornell expects applicants to do their homework. Of course, Cornell also offers webinars hosted by professional staff, including presentations by specific programs. Those people are prepared to answer your questions about academic or technical matters. If they don’t know the answer to a question, they can usually direct you to someone who does. But talking with student ambassadors is different. You may find it easier to ask a student a question like, “How many people were really in your intro course on macroeconomics?” or even, “How’s the food?” Back To Your Essays Armed with a detailed and lively understanding of what it’s really like to be a student at a particular school, you might return to writing those supplement essays with much more to say. You should find yourself better prepared to document your newfound conviction that you would love to find yourself at that college next year. Perhaps you will even volunteer to be a student ambassador one day. Editorial Standards Reprints & Permissions Join The Conversation One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts.  Forbes Community Guidelines Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space. In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's  Terms of Service.   We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil. Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain: False or intentionally out-of-context or misleading information Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kind Attacks on the identity of other commenters or the article's author Content that otherwise violates our site's  terms. User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in: Continuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejected Racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory comments Attempts or tactics that put the site security at risk Actions that otherwise violate our site's  terms. So, how can you be a power user? Stay on topic and share your insights Feel free to be clear and thoughtful to get your point across ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ to show your point of view. Protect your community. Use the report tool to alert us when someone breaks the rules. Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's  Terms of Service. Bahasa Indonesia Eastern Europe Moscow Oblast Elektrostal Elektrostal Localisation : Country Russia , Oblast Moscow Oblast . Available Information : Geographical coordinates , Population, Area, Altitude, Weather and Hotel . Nearby cities and villages : Noginsk , Pavlovsky Posad and Staraya Kupavna . Information Find all the information of Elektrostal or click on the section of your choice in the left menu. Update data Country Oblast Elektrostal Demography Information on the people and the population of Elektrostal. Elektrostal Population 157,409 inhabitants Elektrostal Population Density 3,179.3 /km² (8,234.4 /sq mi) Elektrostal Geography Geographic Information regarding City of Elektrostal . Elektrostal Geographical coordinates Latitude: , Longitude: 55° 48′ 0″ North, 38° 27′ 0″ East Elektrostal Area 4,951 hectares 49.51 km² (19.12 sq mi) Elektrostal Altitude 164 m (538 ft) Elektrostal Climate Humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification: Dfb) Elektrostal Distance Distance (in kilometers) between Elektrostal and the biggest cities of Russia. Elektrostal Map Locate simply the city of Elektrostal through the card, map and satellite image of the city. Elektrostal Nearby cities and villages Elektrostal Weather Weather forecast for the next coming days and current time of Elektrostal. Elektrostal Sunrise and sunset Find below the times of sunrise and sunset calculated 7 days to Elektrostal. Day Sunrise and sunset Twilight Nautical twilight Astronomical twilight 23 July 03:16 - 11:32 - 19:49 02:24 - 20:40 01:00 - 22:04 01:00 - 01:00 24 July 03:17 - 11:32 - 19:47 02:26 - 20:38 01:04 - 22:00 01:00 - 01:00 25 July 03:19 - 11:32 - 19:45 02:29 - 20:36 01:08 - 21:56 01:00 - 01:00 26 July 03:21 - 11:32 - 19:44 02:31 - 20:34 01:12 - 21:52 01:00 - 01:00 27 July 03:23 - 11:32 - 19:42 02:33 - 20:32 01:16 - 21:49 01:00 - 01:00 28 July 03:24 - 11:32 - 19:40 02:35 - 20:29 01:20 - 21:45 01:00 - 01:00 29 July 03:26 - 11:32 - 19:38 02:37 - 20:27 01:23 - 21:41 01:00 - 01:00 Elektrostal Hotel Our team has selected for you a list of hotel in Elektrostal classified by value for money. Book your hotel room at the best price. Located next to Noginskoye Highway in Electrostal, Apelsin Hotel offers comfortable rooms with free Wi-Fi. Free parking is available. The elegant rooms are air conditioned and feature a flat-screen satellite TV and fridge... from Located in the green area Yamskiye Woods, 5 km from Elektrostal city centre, this hotel features a sauna and a restaurant. It offers rooms with a kitchen... from Ekotel Bogorodsk Hotel is located in a picturesque park near Chernogolovsky Pond. It features an indoor swimming pool and a wellness centre. Free Wi-Fi and private parking are provided... from Surrounded by 420,000 m² of parkland and overlooking Kovershi Lake, this hotel outside Moscow offers spa and fitness facilities, and a private beach area with volleyball court and loungers... from Surrounded by green parklands, this hotel in the Moscow region features 2 restaurants, a bowling alley with bar, and several spa and fitness facilities. Moscow Ring Road is 17 km away... from Elektrostal Nearby Below is a list of activities and point of interest in Elektrostal and its surroundings. The Unique Burial of a Child of Early Scythian Time at the Cemetery of Saryg-Bulun (Tuva) << Previous page Pages:  379-406 In 1988, the Tuvan Archaeological Expedition (led by M. E. Kilunovskaya and V. A. Semenov) discovered a unique burial of the early Iron Age at Saryg-Bulun in Central Tuva. There are two burial mounds of the Aldy-Bel culture dated by 7th century BC. Within the barrows, which adjoined one another, forming a figure-of-eight, there were discovered 7 burials, from which a representative collection of artifacts was recovered. Burial 5 was the most unique, it was found in a coffin made of a larch trunk, with a tightly closed lid. Due to the preservative properties of larch and lack of air access, the coffin contained a well-preserved mummy of a child with an accompanying set of grave goods. The interred individual retained the skin on his face and had a leather headdress painted with red pigment and a coat, sewn from jerboa fur. The coat was belted with a leather belt with bronze ornaments and buckles. Besides that, a leather quiver with arrows with the shafts decorated with painted ornaments, fully preserved battle pick and a bow were buried in the coffin. Unexpectedly, the full-genomic analysis, showed that the individual was female. This fact opens a new aspect in the study of the social history of the Scythian society and perhaps brings us back to the myth of the Amazons, discussed by Herodotus. Of course, this discovery is unique in its preservation for the Scythian culture of Tuva and requires careful study and conservation. Keywords: Tuva, Early Iron Age, early Scythian period, Aldy-Bel culture, barrow, burial in the coffin, mummy, full genome sequencing, aDNA Information about authors: Marina Kilunovskaya (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation E-mail: [email protected] Vladimir Semenov (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation E-mail: [email protected] Varvara Busova  (Moscow, Russian Federation).  (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences.  Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected] Kharis Mustafin  (Moscow, Russian Federation). Candidate of Technical Sciences. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  Institutsky Lane, 9, Dolgoprudny, 141701, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected] Irina Alborova  (Moscow, Russian Federation). Candidate of Biological Sciences. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  Institutsky Lane, 9, Dolgoprudny, 141701, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected] Alina Matzvai  (Moscow, Russian Federation). Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.  Institutsky Lane, 9, Dolgoprudny, 141701, Moscow Oblast, Russian Federation E-mail:  [email protected] Shopping Cart Items: 0 Cart Total: 0,00 € place your order Price pdf version student - 2,75 € individual - 3,00 € institutional - 7,00 € Copyright В© 1999-2022. Stratum Publishing House 458 IMAGES Community Immersion Essay Example Overview of Community Immersion- Lesson 7 Essay about Community Immersion In Social Work Essay 12Community-Outreach-Program-Understanding-the-Concepts-and-Principles Fundamentals of Community Immersion Free Essay Example Elements of Community and Activities in Community Immersion COMMENTS When Community Immersion Becomes Distance Learning: Lessons Learned Addressing the Social Determinants of Health: Community Engagement Immersion (NURS 354) is a case study that uses a flipped classroom format in which students process class materials at community sites with preceptors while in-class time is focused on a deeper and interactive exploration of the course content with course faculty (Schroeder et al., 2019). 10 Conclusions and Recommendations Community programs can expand the opportunities for youth to acquire personal and social assets and to experience the broad range of features of positive developmental settings. Programs can also fill gaps in the opportunities available in specific adolescents' lives. Among other things, these programs can incorporate opportunities for ... In Their Words: Uncovering and Explaining the Outcomes of Community Community immersion has always been regarded as an important component of a medical education curriculum. Such program is essential in achieving various educational outcomes. Development and evaluation of a community immersion program during The community immersion clerkship is part of a larger community health program spanning the 6 years of undergraduate medical training, including community-oriented (epidemiology, occupational health, health economics, and ethics) as well as community-based training activities (such as ambulatory care clerkship, home care visits, and short-term ... PDF Enhancing Multicultural Awareness: Understanding the Effect of ... Counselor education programs using community immersion projects in their coursework to enhance the multicultural awareness of students usually require students to interact with marginalized communities. Examples of marginalized communities typically include: racial/ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA-identifying, older populations, homeless, people ... The Impact of Immersion The Impact of Immersion. The Immersion Program has become one of the most popular and meaningful parts of community engagement at Rollins College for many faculty, staff, and students. The Immersion Program at Rollins College is rooted in community engagement and leadership, seeking to broaden students' understanding of the world through ... Police Practice: The Community Immersion Program Building Relationships The Community Immersion Program designed by and intended for the city it serves, has helped the Austin Police Department (APD) build bridges and establishes partnerships in the community. The program has a powerful effect in that it requires participants (officers) to immerse themselves in a portion of the community, engage in dialogue with ... What is Service Learning or Community Engagement? Community engagement pedagogies, often called "service learning," are ones that combine learning goals and community service in ways that can enhance both student growth and the common good. In the words of the National Service Learning Clearinghouse, it is "a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service ... How to Write the Community Essay: Complete Guide + Examples Step 1: Decide What Community to Write About. Step 2: The BEABIES Exercise. Step 3: Pick a Structure (Narrative or Montage) Community Essay Example: East Meets West. Community Essay Example: Storytellers. The Uncommon Connections Exercise. How to Write the Community Essay + Examples 2023-24 In a nutshell, the community essay should exhibit three things: An aspect of yourself, 2. in the context of a community you belonged to, and 3. how this experience may shape your contribution to the community you'll join in college. It may look like a fairly simple equation: 1 + 2 = 3. However, each college will word their community essay ... Supporting Critical Reflection in Community-Engaged Learning Reflection supports meaning-making, and regular reflection activities help students connect their community engagement experience to course or program learning objectives. Studies show that reflection can strengthen critical thinking 1 and enhance student development on measures of civic values and personal growth . 2 Reflection can come in ... Fundamentals of Community Immersion Free Essay Example 5. Organizers must be able to give ideas about the benefits and other involvement the community may do. * Entering the Community. The community should be aware on the purpose of the groups' entry. At this stage, there should be a courtesy call for everyone you may get in touch during the implementation of the project. What is Community Immersion Community immersion is a strategy in community organizing that is sought to imbibe among the NSTP trainees a better understanding and realization of the different community concerns through the exposure on actual life situations specifically in the deprived, depressed and the underprivileged (DDU) communities. The Community Immersion Program: building relationships The Community Immersion Program, designed by and intended for the city it serves, has helped the Austin Police Department build bridges and establish partnerships in the community. While the program is not a panacea, it represents the pinnacle of a value system the agency conveys to officers from the day they are recruited through the day they ... Community Immersion Essay Community Immersion Analysis On Community. definition of Community, Netting, Kettner, McMurty and Thomas (2012) stated by Warren (1978) "Community is the combination of social units and systems that perform the major social functions relevant to meeting people's needs on a local level." (p.133). Understanding communities is important to ... Nstp 2 Community Immersion Narrative Report for Midterm NATIONAL SERVICE TRAINING PROGRAM NARRATIVE REPORT OF COMMUNITY IMMERSION. Submitted to: Quennie Llera. Immersion Adviser. In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering in National Service Training Program. Submitted by: Asmin P. Kamensali. 1BSCpE-B. June, 2021. Kabacan, Cotabato Philippines Learning English in The United States: [Essay Example], 596 words Cultural Immersion Experience. One of the most significant benefits of learning English in the United States is the opportunity for cultural immersion. Language and culture are closely intertwined, and by immersing oneself in an English-speaking environment, learners gain a deeper understanding of American culture and society. Joseph Kao What convinced you to apply to the Stanford MSx Program? Apple was great for four years because I was always on the frontier of technology innovation. I was working on the Apple Vision Pro lens module. I was the first material scientist brought into the smart glasses program and grew my team to 10 people in less than two years. Category:Moscow Oblast Media in category "Moscow Oblast" The following 200 files are in this category, out of 593 total. (previous page) () Moscow: The making of a modern metropolis :: Web media :: Publications WorldBuild 365. от 09 September 2016. Moscow: The making of a modern metropolis. 09 September 2016. If there is a city that is emblematic of Russia's journey from the medieval period, through the Imperial Era, past the Soviet Union to the present day, it is Moscow. The architecture of the Russian capital is like a tapestry — weaving ... Student Ambassadors Can Help You Write Your College Admissions Essays Many colleges ask applicants to write essays explaining exactly why they want to attend not just any college, but their school in particular. However, once you are up to your ears in essay writing ... Elektrostal, Moscow Oblast, Russia Elektrostal Geography. Geographic Information regarding City of Elektrostal. Elektrostal Geographical coordinates. Latitude: 55.8, Longitude: 38.45. 55° 48′ 0″ North, 38° 27′ 0″ East. Elektrostal Area. 4,951 hectares. 49.51 km² (19.12 sq mi) Elektrostal Altitude. The Unique Burial of a Child of Early Scythian Time at the Cemetery of Burial 5 was the most unique, it was found in a coffin made of a larch trunk, with a tightly closed lid. Due to the preservative properties of larch and lack of air access, the coffin contained a well-preserved mummy of a child with an accompanying set of grave goods. The interred individual retained the skin on his face and had a leather ... assignment essay homework paper phd report resume review thesis