Overview
Six centers of learning at Elizabethtown College – the Center for Global Citizenship, the Center for Community and Civic Engagement, the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, the Edward R. Murphy Center for Continuing Education and Distance Learning, the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and the Bowers Writers House – add depth and uniqueness to our academic program and broaden the institution’s appeal to a wider audience.
The Center for Global Citizenship provides a variety of opportunities for our undergraduate and graduate students both in and out of the classroom, at home and abroad. The Center for Community and Civic Engagement creates civic engagement experiences to provide opportunities to more fully explore the meaning of our motto “Educate for Service” in today’s increasingly global society. The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning is a resource center and educational forum for developing new modes of learning for our students. The Young Center peripherally touches our students through the speakers it hosts, the resources it brings to our classrooms, and the lectures it offers on our campus. The Edward R. Murphy Center for Continuing Education and Distance Learning further enriches the campus by bringing adult learners from the community to the campus to experience and participate in the academic excellence of the College. The Bowers Writers House is an interdisciplinary venue for presentation, performance, expression and study.
Center for Global Citizenship
Elizabethtown’s Center for Global Citizenship helps students develop into global citizens who are informed about the world, who have the skills and abilities to cross boundaries, and who work to serve their communities. The Center brings together under one umbrella two distinctive facets of the Elizabethtown heritage: a tradition of peacemaking and a global outlook on education and citizenship.
The College’s approach to global citizenship is distinctive, owing to our particular mission and heritage. In keeping with the Brethren faith of our founders, Elizabethtown’s mission declares that “the College affirms the values of peace, nonviolence, human dignity and social justice and seeks to make those values manifest in the global community,” consistent with our motto to “Educate for Service.”
Peacemaking
Over the century since members of the Church of the Brethren founded Elizabethtown, our understanding of the College’s peace legacy has evolved within the context of world events and the shifting views of our community. Although much has changed about the College, today’s Elizabethtown continues “to affirm the values of peace, nonviolence, human dignity and social justice, and seeks to make those values manifest in the global community.” One way the College does so is by offering a Peace and Conflict Studies Minor .
Also reflective of that mission, the Center for Global Citizenship includes peacemaking as one of its two areas of focus. As a result of efforts by our faculty leaders in this area, Elizabethtown is creating opportunities to build the community of moral discourse necessary to allow our students to learn about, and discuss issues related to, the College’s values. This discussion grows into action that creates peace, affirms human dignity, and works for social justice in Elizabethtown and the wider world.
Every year, the Center organizes a variety of trips, activities, lectures and events to enable students to more fully explore the practice of and their commitment to peace. Since spring 2007, the Center has hosted the annual Ware Lecture on Peacemaking, a program that brings world-class speakers to campus to engage students, faculty and staff on issues of global peace and justice.
For more information, please visit www.etown.edu/centers/global-citizenship/peace.
Center for Community and Civic Engagement
In keeping with Elizabethtown College’s Educational Philosophy and Institutional Learning Goals, the Center for Community and Civic Engagement provides opportunities for students to strengthen scholarship and leadership beyond the classroom. The CCCE provides high impact practices such as experiential learning and civic engagement that offer all students pathways and opportunities for real-world learning in the community in preparation for meaningful life work.
In seeking to “educate for service,” Elizabethtown College believes that students can perform no greater service than they do when sharing knowledge and creativity with others. The Center provides opportunities for students to participate with annual campus-wide events, such as Into the Streets, Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, and National Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week; Community Service Work Study; ongoing volunteer placements, such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, Girl Scouts, afterschool programs, the Resident Assistant Program (RAP), and the Moving Forward Together mentoring program with Milton Hershey School and the School District of Lancaster. In addition, across campus, there are frequent and focused efforts of our student clubs, service organizations, and Student Directed Learning Communities.
The service-learning pedagogy is being integrated into our classrooms through faculty-directed projects, urban and rural service-learning experiences, and fieldwork. Service-learning increasingly is being integrated into international travel opportunities in places as far away as Ireland, Thailand, Vietnam and Gambia.
Elizabethtown College is a member of Campus Compact, a national coalition of nearly 1,200 colleges dedicated to promoting community service, civic engagement and service-learning in higher education. The College also is an AmeriCorps campus, offering opportunities for students to serve as AmeriCorps Scholars in Service to Pennsylvania.
For six consecutive years, Elizabethtown has been selected for the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, recognizing the efforts our College community makes in building a national culture of service and civic engagement. Elizabethtown College received the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s 2010 Engagement Elective Classification. The Center for Community and Civic Engagement documented excellent alignment among mission, culture, leadership, resources, and practices that support dynamic and noteworthy community engagement, and we were able to respond to the classification framework with both descriptions and examples of exemplary institutionalized practices of community engagement. We also documented and coordinated evidence of community engagement in a coherent and compelling response to the framework’s inquiry.
Science in Motion (SIM) and Science: It’s Elementary (SIE) programs are housed in the Center for Community and Civic Engagement. Both programs provide engaging professional development seminars for teachers that offer guidance on implementing hands-on, inquiry science labs and standards-based curricula in the classroom, and provide high-tech equipment and resources to support these classroom investigations.
Although our service begins at home, it certainly doesn’t stop here. Individually and collectively, members of our community are reaching far beyond our campus boundaries to help those in need. In partnership with relief and development agencies, students, faculty and staff take part in yearly trips during winter and spring break and May term to Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Native American lands, and other areas to provide assistance where it is needed. The Center also houses the Disaster Relief Initiative. The entire campus community pulls together to support victims of natural disasters both domestically and internationally.
All of these efforts are the result of our belief that we have an obligation to use our knowledge to aid those in need, whether they live right around the corner or halfway around the world. And through these experiences our students benefit because their understanding of the global community is broadened and their knowledge of their chosen discipline is enhanced.
For more information, please visit the Center for Community and Civic Engagement’s website at www.etown.edu/centers/community-civic.
Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies
The Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies is an internationally recognized scholarly institute that fosters the research and interpretation of Anabaptist and Pietist groups. Integral to the academic life of Elizabethtown College, the Young Center connects the college to an international network of scholars who research Anabaptist and Pietist groups, and Center faculty teach undergraduate courses related to Anabaptist and Pietist studies. The staff conducts research on the life, culture and beliefs of Anabaptists and Pietists, primarily in the North American context. Interpretive programs open to the general public include evening lectures and seminars during the academic year, exhibits and occasional conferences.
Located on Elizabethtown College’s Lake Placida, the Young Center is named for Dr. Galen S Young, D.O., and Jessie M. Young and includes the Bucher Meetinghouse, named for long-time college trustee Rufus P. Bucher. The Young Center holds a unique collection of Amish-related publications and a small rare book collection related to Anabaptist and Pietist groups.
The Young Center brings visiting scholars to campus for a semester of research and writing in Anabaptist and Pietist studies by offering the Snowden Fellowship and the Kreider Fellowship. An annual doctoral fellowship is also available for doctoral students who are researching or writing about topics related to Anabaptism and Pietism. Fellows come to the Young Center from across the nation and around the world.
The Young Center works with Johns Hopkins University Press to publish Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, a book series for which Senior Fellow Donald B. Kraybill serves as editor.
Each year the Center presents the Dale Brown Book Award for the book designated by a panel of independent judges as the best new book in Anabaptist or Pietist studies. The Center also sponsors the annual Durnbaugh Lectures, which feature a distinguished scholar who advances Anabaptist and Pietist studies.
For more information about the Young Center, please call (717) 361-1470 or visit www.etown.edu/centers/young-center.
Edward R. Murphy Center for Continuing Education and Distance Learning
As a distinct academic unit of Elizabethtown College empowered to meet the needs of adult learners, the Edward R. Murphy Center for Continuing Education and Distance Learning (CCEDL) offers a variety of learning programs for adults in the South Central Pennsylvania region with courses available at the Elizabethtown campus, in Harrisburg at the Dixon University Center, in Lancaster at College Square on Harrisburg Pike and at the HACC Lancaster Campus, in York on St. Charles Way, and over the Internet.
The Center seeks to extend the boundaries of the College’s learning community to include a wider and more diverse population. The Center expresses the values of the College’s mission through a commitment to and advocacy of degree and non-degree academic programs for adult learners. In particular, the Center embraces the values of human dignity and social justice by widening access to quality higher education for adults. In its programs and outreach, the Center fosters a learner-centered academic culture that expresses the College’s belief that learning is lifelong and most noble when used to benefit others.
The Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools accredits CCEDL programs. The Center has not sought accreditation through the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs.
For more information or to obtain a copy of the CCEDL Catalog, please call (717) 361-1411 or visit www.etowndegrees.com.
Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
Elizabethtown College’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) is dedicated to the development of the College’s faculty and professional staff and the promotion of interdisciplinary dialogue and scholarship. Launched in 2007, CETL serves as a resource center and educational forum for developing new modes of learning for our students. The Center promotes the sharing of best practices in pedagogy, conducts professional development activities, and enhances the activities of other College centers and programs.
CETL also administers the College’s Collaborative Interdisciplinary Scholarship Program, which offers financial support for interdisciplinary scholarship projects undertaken jointly by teams of faculty, students and professional staff. Through these grants, multidisciplinary teams create new or revised interdisciplinary courses, research opportunities, teaching innovations, articles and presentations for professional conferences.
For more information, please contact Dr. Rachel Finley-Bowman.
Bowers Writers House
Written communication, whether fiction or nonfiction, colors the way people visualize the world. Every academic department at Elizabethtown College relies on effective writing to inform and educate. The College has a firm commitment to fostering effective writing and encouraging intellectual dialogue that crosses academic boundaries. Illustrative of this commitment is Elizabethtown College’s creation of Bowers Writers House, designed to provide thought-provoking opportunities for the faculty, staff and students from our 40 majors as well as members of the Elizabethtown community.
Bowers Writers House offers an interdisciplinary variety of programming, involving scholars from all genres of study. We’ve hosted historians, mathematicians, musicians, genetic scientists, linguists, poets, actors, playwrights and national and international activists and humanists. Our first two years of activity have seen over 80 events, and we look forward to contributing to the on and off-campus communities of Elizabethtown College for years to come.
For more information, please visit www.etown.edu/centers/writershouse. |
