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Professional Education
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For more information
please contact:HECUA specializes in an experiential, learner-centered approach that connects students, faculty and institutions of higher education with communities.
HECUA provides faculty and staff development on a contract basis to institutions seeking to expand their visions of higher education and democracy. HECUA has experience in delivering high quality professional education programs in a variety of areas such as foundations of experiential education, diversity and higher education, civic engagement and community collaboration, student-centered teaching, transformative pedagogies, service-learning and social justice, arts and social change, humanities and experiential education, public art, and environmental sciences and experiential education. HECUA offers professional education in the Twin Cities, Ecuador, Norway, and Northern Ireland.
HECUA can work with you to develop programs
specifically for your faculty and institutions. Recent programs
have included:
a half-day workshop on integrating experiential methods into courses;
a two-week immersion in one of our sites; and multi-year, multi-faceted
efforts to develop curriculum and support for diversity, civic
engagement, service learning or other institutional needs.
Detailed Examples of Professional Education Programs:
Teaching and Learning in the City
St. Olaf College
St. Olaf College and HECUA are working in partnership on a three-year
project designed to develop first-year seminars that explore the
role of experience in education, provide first-hand experience
with issues of diversity and make connections between global and
local. The core of the work is the development of a series of
courses for first-year students that give students direct experience
with a wide range of people, cultures and issues. HECUA facilitates
the ³urban immersion² experiences in the Twin Cities
as part of the courses and works with faculty ahead of time to
design courses with intentional experiences and social-justice
frameworks.
Service-Learning for Social Justice² in Northern Ireland Gustavus Adolphus College A group of faculty and administrators from Gustavus Adolphus College attended a week-long seminar entitled ³Service Learning for Social Justice² at HECUA¹s site in Northern Ireland (UNESCO Center). HECUA program directors worked closely with Gustavus faculty in a retreat-like setting exploring issues in Northern Ireland and developing service-learning courses. Participants also focused on creating a seminar to continue conversations back on campus toward better connecting students and courses to social themes using experiential and service learning as a tool for teaching.
Best Practices of Experiential
Education
Williams College
Following the Williams-HECUA J-Term ³Experiencing Guatemala²
in 2001, HECUA has provided two one-day faculty development seminars
at Williams. The first was a short seminar on the best practices
of experiential education and theories of learning that guide
best practices of teaching. The second seminar focused on experiential
education and curriculum design funded through the campus-based
Gaudino Scholars money. Similar programs have been conducted by
Augustana College, Macalester College and the University of Minnesota.
Group Wheels: Exploring
Public Art and Social Change
College of St. Catherine
HECUA provided a one-day urban immersion program to the School
of Social Work at the College of St. Catherine. This art tour
highlighted public works in the Longfellow, Capitol Hill, and
West Side neighborhoods of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The program
was funded through a Bush Foundation grant focused on community
collaboration and issues of diversity on campus and focused on
the use of public art as a vehicle for social change.
Diversity and Democracy:
Can it Work?
Lutheran College Consortium, Teagle Foundation Grant
A summer workshop designed and led by HECUA staff included a ³mobile
workshop² that guided participants in learning to read the
urban landscape. It included field experiences and interaction
with a variety of community artists and organizers. Faculty, staff
and students from St. Olaf, Luther, Concordia-Moorhead, and Gustavus
Adolphus Colleges took up important questions of diversity and
higher education. This workshop was part of the Lutheran College
Consortium work on diversity.