SLS-7d2.3 Exchange Program at UCLA

University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) ranked 31 in the QS (2017), and is one of the most prestigious “young universities” in the world.  The UCLA Center for Community Learning “promotes and supports community-engaged research, teaching and learning in partnership with communities and organisations throughout Los Angeles, regionally, nationally and globally.  The centre facilitates faculty and student work that integrates sustained, reciprocal engagement with the public and helps transform UCLS’s mission to support the co-creation co-dissemination, co-preservation and co-application of knowledge for the betterment of society.”  The vision of the centre is to make community-engaged research, teaching and learning a cornerstone of undergraduate education at UCLA.  

In 1980, the Office of Field Studies was established to support academic engagement beyond the classroom.  In 1987-90, UCLA Chancellor Charles Young and Stanford President Donald Kennedy created California Campus Compact to engage students in their communities and bring more resources to such efforts in California.  In 1997, America Reads: LA JumpStart program was launched in partnership with Student Affairs BRUIN CORPS. In 1999, The Chancellor’s Service-Learning Task Force calls for the creation of a Center for Experiential  Education and Service-Learning.  In 2001, The Center for Experiential Education and Service-Learning was established.  In 2003, the Center was renamed the Center for Community Learning.  The Center spearheaded UCLA’s effort to create an ‘SL’ course suffix to designate Service-Learning courses.  In 2006, the Civic Engagement Minor was launched.  In 2007, UCLA received the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, an elective designation that indicates institutional commitment to community engagement by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In 2011, the Center launched the 195CE internship courses with the CE suffix signifying the students are working through the Center and receiving extensive supervision and mentoring from graduate student instructors.  In 2017, the Center launched a community engaged pedagogy course to provide professional development for graduate students across the disciplines - Graduate Student Professional Development 495CE.  In 2019, the Center launched a new Community Engagement and Social Change minor to provide undergraduates with the opportunity for sustained community-engaged work integrated within an academic social justice framework. 

For Maryland and Brown, the SL internship program grew out of prior collaboration.  UCLA, however, was a brand new partner.  We approached them because of their reputation in service-learning and recommendations from trusted friends in the community.  We were very pleasantly surprised when they received our emailed enquiry warmly.  We then visited them at their campus twice before we arrived at a tentative agreement to develop a summer internship program for our students.  Douglas Barrera of the Center designed a tailor-made program for our three students sent to UCLA.  They attend seminars on non-profit organization management and community development, cultural events, as well as mandatory weekly reflection meetings while in the United States.  They are then assigned each to an NGO in the Las Angeles area for the duration of their program.   

Los Angeles is the second largest cities in the USA, after New York City.  Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity, Hollywood entertainment industry and its sprawling metropolis.  LA is the sixth most competitive financial centre, the largest manufacturing centre and the busiest port in the USA.  As of 2020, it also has 41,290 homeless people, and increase of 14% over the previous year.