Loyola University > Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship (CELTS) > About > CELTS Framework

CELTS Framework

Conceptual Framework

Note: This conceptual framework applies to the Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, & Scholarship's overall work. Click here for our conceptual framework of community partnerships specifically.

MISSION STATEMENT:

Advancing Loyola’s Jesuit, Catholic mission of “expanding knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith,” the Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship (CELTS) is a teaching and learning center that sits at the intersection of innovative experiential learning pedagogy, community-engaged learning, and the scholarship of engagement.

The goal of CELTS is to foster community-engaged, high-impact experiential learning in collaboration with faculty, staff, community partners, and undergraduate and graduate students. Through this collaboration, each participant serves as a co-educator, developing creative pedagogical approaches and producing scholarly initiatives focused on teaching, learning, and community engagement.

As a curriculum development center at Loyola University Chicago, the Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, & Scholarship anchors the mission and implementation of initiatives within community-based learning literature and high-impact learning practices (Kuh, 2008). The Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, & Scholarship establishes criteria of practice rooted in the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP), the Council for the Advancement of Standards (CAS), as well as rooted in learning theory, such as Mezirow’s Theory of Transformative Learning (1997, 2001), Kolb’s (1984) model of experiential learning, and Integrated Course Design (Fink, 2013). Fostering both critical service-learning experiences and critical reflection (Dewey, 1908, 1910; Mitchell, 2008; Ash & Clayton, 2009) on those experiences across the curriculum remains a hallmark of Loyola University Chicago’s Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, & Scholarship. Through interrogating issues with a social justice lens, the Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, & Scholarship vision is to build an education that creates engaged, justice-oriented citizens through integrative learning for community impact.

Goals to build transformational learning experiences at Loyola University Chicago in pursuit of the common good:

Build capacity of faculty/staff, students, and partners to generate engaged research and engaged scholarship
Expand faculty development across CELTS programs to foster capacity in community-engaged and high-impact learning, critical reflection, and research.
Create new and maintain existing community partnerships to provide community-based learning opportunities for faculty and students, and capacity-building programs for partners.
Deepen teaching and learning experiences and expand opportunities for Loyola faculty and students through engaged learning courses, undergraduate research opportunities, community-based learning opportunities (service-learning, academic internships, and research), and digital learning portfolios.
Facilitate the development of engaged learning course opportunities for faculty, students, and partners.