Faculty and Graduate Student Collaboration

The Center for Social Concerns works with faculty at the University of Notre Dame in many ways. It supports faculty scholarship through the Ganey Award and Ganey Mini-Grants; facilitates faculty teaching through Course Development Grants, and by offering consultations and workshops like the Faculty Institute on community-based learning and research, and modest funds for conference attendance and materials; and contributes to a variety of faculty interests that coincide with the Center’s mission through its Faculty Fellows Program.

Each semester, the Center provides a booklet highlighting faculty teaching by describing the courses taught at the university – approximately 90 a year — that involve service, community-based research, or other ways that students can participate in, contribute to, and learn from the local off-campus community or other communities.

The Center also encourages faculty to participate in various experiential learning opportunities it has designed for students, such as the Appalachia Seminar, and in others created especially for them, for example, the May 2004 faculty trip to El Salvador.

Faculty at the university contribute a great deal to the academic offerings and other programs run through the Center for Social Concerns. They lead reflection sessions with students who have returned from their mid-semester Urban Plunge and those who have participated in the Summer Service Internship Program. They provide readings and conduct presentations for many Center seminars. And they act in a number of advisory roles, for the Center’s research, for example, and in the selection of Ganey Award winners.