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Community Engaged Learning


Working Together to Apply Knowledge


CEL involves students, faculty and community partners working together to apply knowledge in authentic settings in order to address community needs while also meeting instructional objectives. CEL enhances and deepens students' understanding of an academic discipline by facilitating the integration of theory and practice. This high impact teaching method provides students with experiences that develop life skills, with opportunities to engage in critical reflection, and with the intellectual space to understand and contribute to the public purpose of their chosen major or discipline.

Past Participants


Classroom Component


 

The classroom component of the course is combined with the experiential learning component, along with multiple reflection opportunities, to create an enriching, meaningful and applied learning experience for the student. This strategy allows students to apply lecture topics to the professional world, enhances civic responsibility, and strengthens relationships between students and their off-campus community. 

BIOL3210

Microbiology

Syllabus

BIOL3460

Global Environmental Issues

Syllabus

BIOL3470

Conservation Biology

syllabus

BIOL5480

Entomology

syllabus

BIOL3510

Biochemistry

syllabus

BIOL5370

Mammalogy

syllabus

Each of these courses allows students to engage in meaningful, applied work with a community partner that enriches the learning experience.

For more details see the class-specific CEL syllabus linked above.

Amanda Hoepfner


Amanda Hoepfner (Associate Instructor/CEL Coordinator)

Amanda is an instructor for the School of Biological Science in addition to being the Community Engaged Learning Coordinator. She mainly teaches and coordinates the second semester of the freshman course, Fundamentals of Biology II (Biol 1620), and teaches the ecology section of Ecology and Evolution (Biol 3410).

Amanda is enthusiastic about community engaged learning and attributes much of her professional direction to the experiences she gained through volunteer work. As a teenager, she volunteered at Utah’s Hogle Zoo as a Zoo Aid. Here she started working with great apes (namely orangutans) and became interested in behavioral ecology and biology.

Amanda started at the University of Utah as an undergraduate herself, and earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biology in 2010. She continued at the U to earn her PhD in Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology studying the vocal behavior of wild Bornean orangutans.

 

Contact Information


Amanda Hoepfner

Associate Instructor/Community Engaged Learning Coordinator

Offices: Bldg. 44 Rm 221

Contact Amanda