Overview
Five centers of learning at Elizabethtown College – the Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking, the Center for Community and Civic Engagement, the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, 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 Understanding and Peacemaking 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 Bowers Writers House is an interdisciplinary venue for presentation, performance, expression and study.
Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking
The Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking advances curricular and co-curricular programs to enhance global understanding and non-violent conflict transformation. The Center also brings together three interdisciplinary programs, International Studies, Asian Studies, and Peace and Conflict Studies and is the home of the Ware Colloquium for Global Citizenship and Peacemaking, an endowed program that includes the Ware Lecture on Peacemaking and the Ware Seminars on Global Citizenship.
The Center creates opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to develop into global citizens who are knowledgeable about global issues, empathetic towards people of other cultures and nationalities, and committed to the values of peace, human dignity, and social justice.
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.” The Center’s mission affirms the values of the College and frames international engagement as a commitment to peace, service, and cultural understanding.
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. The Center’s Peacemaker-in-Residence enhances programs on peace and mediation, and the Ambassador-in-Residence manages external and international partnerships. Since spring 2007, the Ware Lecture on Peacemaking has brought world leaders, including several Nobel Laureates, to campus to engage students, faculty, and staff on issues of global peace and justice.
For more information, please visit the Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking website at www.etown.edu/centers/global.
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 Community Based Learning (CBL), opportunities for our students such as undergraduate community-based research, 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, and the Moving Forward Together mentoring program with Milton Hershey School. In addition, across campus, there are frequent and focused efforts of our student clubs, service organizations, and Student Directed Learning Communities.
The Community Based Learning pedagogy is being integrated into our classrooms through faculty-directed projects, urban and rural service-learning experiences, undergraduate research, and fieldwork. Service-Learning increasingly is being integrated into international travel opportunities in places as far away as Ireland, Thailand, Vietnam, Ghana, 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.
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. In 2013, Elizabethtown College was recognized with the President’s National Higher Education Community Service Award With Distinction. 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.
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 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. The Center faculty members 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. A 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 diverse backgrounds 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, please call (717) 361-1470 or visit the Young Center website at www.etown.edu/centers/young-center.
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.
For more information, please contact Dr. Michele Kozimor-King.
Bowers Writers House
Written communication – whether it be fiction, poetry, drama, essay, or nonfiction – colors the way people visualize the world. Each 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 Lancaster County community.
Bowers Writers House offers an interdisciplinary variety of programming, involving scholars from all genres of study. In our first three years, we’ve hosted over 130 historians, mathematicians, musicians, genetic scientists, linguists, poets, actors, playwrights, and national and international activists and humanists. And in those three years of activity Bowers Writers House has seen over 200 events and over 1,500 visitors. We look forward to contributing to the on and off-campus communities of Elizabethtown College for years to come.
For more information, please call (717) 689-3945 or visit the Bowers Writers House website at www.etown.edu/centers/writershouse.
|
