Department head(s)
Maria Cartagena
- Director of Community-Based Learning
Learning in and with our communities
If you can’t wait to start making a difference, you’ve come to the right place. Community-Based Learning (CBL) pairs Mount Holyoke students, faculty and staff with local leaders in South Hadley and beyond to collaborate on internships, research and service projects that have a direct, positive impact in our communities. You’ll also be able to learn from on-the-ground practitioners and understand how to apply the ideas, theories and models you learn in class. A CBL experience breaks down the barrier between the classroom and the real world, enhancing your understanding of current social issues both locally and nationally, and helping you grow the leadership, organizing and advocacy skills that are vital to change making at all levels. And for our community partners, CBL fosters sustainable, mutually beneficial relationships that support local organizations and help them thrive.
The core components of the CBL program include student employment opportunities, tutoring and mentoring opportunities and community partnerships.
CBL employs students in a variety of capacities. CBL student employment opportunities are listed each spring and as needed on Workday.
Each semester, Mount Holyoke College places many students as tutors/mentors in educational partnerships throughout the Pioneer Valley, Our tutors/mentors hope to make positive impacts on student academic and social outcomes, and improve access to higher education through positive role modeling, mentoring, and learning support.
Mount Holyoke College students can participate as a tutor/mentor in two ways:
Through a CBL Course Placement: many courses enable students to serve as tutors as part of course credit.
As a Work-Study Job (America Reads/America Counts): If you are a U.S. citizen and receive a federal work-study award as part of your financial aid package at Mount Holyoke, you are eligible to work as a tutor off-campus in the Homework House program in Holyoke. Please visit Workday to apply to become a HH tutor.
To become a tutor/mentor, please go to Workday to find open tutor/mentor positions. If you have any questions, email us at cbl@mtholyoke.edu.
CBL students, faculty, and staff work in many communities and with many different types of community agencies and organizations. There is no unified “community voice” guiding us to successful, reciprocal, sustainable partnership. But there are many community organization staff and leaders with extensive experience working with area colleges, students, faculty with much to share with us about what works and what does not, and why.
For the last decade or more, Holyoke community leaders, social and human service agency staff, residents, educators and those of us who come from area college campuses have met together to consider ways to ensure that campus-community partnerships are practiced to the highest ethical and practical standards. The “Campus-Community Partnership Project” yielded the Holyoke Campus Community Compact. Mount Holyoke’s CBL Program is a signatory to that Compact, and as such, we seek to abide by its principles.
Principles of Practice guide Mount Holyoke faculty and students toward sustainable, ethical practices that value rigorous and meaningful academic learning as an essential outcome of campus-community partnerships.
Community-Based Learning links students with communities through courses, independent studies, internships, and research and service projects that combine learning and analysis with action and social change.