Community Engagement and Public Service Activities

In Fall 2022, Spanish professors and RSO La Mezcla organized a field trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts, inviting community members from Brilliant Detroit.

The purpose of this course is to expose students to social entrepreneurship concepts and theories to help them learn how community leadership can facilitate the social entrepreneurship process for positive community change (i.e. social impact). This experiential learning course is designed for students who wish to integrate entrepreneurial problem-solving skills with strategic social innovation concepts to affect positive social change in underserved communities. This course appeals to students who have a strong desire to become, advise, or support social entrepreneurs, or work in a start-up, early stage, or entrepreneurial-minded company or community organization that creates positive social impact using a for-profit business model. Note that this is an academic service-learning (ASL)/Community-Engaged PBL (project-based learning) course, where students will interact with entrepreneurs and organizations in the community to develop a comprehensive business plan to address a pressing social problem.

Help Yourself Win Academy (HYA) is an afterschool program with a profound mission: to transform the lives of underprivileged elementary school children by establishing after-school academies on college campuses. HYA believes college should be an attainable expectation for all children, including those facing adversity. HYA aims to bridge this gap by providing the necessary support, knowledge, and skills to empower these young minds and unlock their potential.

The goal of this project is to widen the audience and enhance the impact of the workshop series "Arts and Agency from the Inside Out" (A&A), while also developing new partnerships-specifically with Inside-Out Literary Arts, and acclaimed Detroit-based program that brings creative writers into more than 100 schools and community settings every year. By doing fewer workshops with more intensive preliminary planning and cross-promotion, inviting a range of different participants, from public school students and teachers to police and state legislators, we intend to bring the transformative experience of IO/A&A to a bigger stage, while maintaining its intimacy.