ACE for Faculty

How Does ACE Help your Students?

Gaining an Academic Community Engagement (ACE) designation for your course(s) is both easy and beneficial. ACE promotes the application of course content within the community setting through partnerships with the community. According to the National Survey for Students Engagement Annual Report (2002), "Community Engagement provides students with opportunities to synthesize, integrate and apply their knowledge. Such experience makes learning more meaningful and ultimately more useful because what students know becomes part of who they are." Students learn to value community involvement through their ACE activities. They develop an understanding of the benefits of community engagement - with the ultimate goal of becoming lifelong engaged citizens that contribute to the public good.

Additional research has found that ACE enhances academic performance and has shown to have a significant positive effect on GPA, writing skills, critical thinking skills, a commitment to community, self–efficacy, and leadership ability.

Get Started

Each semester, we offer over 200 ACE-designated courses that span all colleges and most disciplines. If you are a faculty member who has already incorporated the ACE pedagogy in your courses or would like to in future semesters, please consider applying for the formal designation. (This only takes a few minutes.) This ACE designation appears on the course schedule and many students prefer to register for these types of experiential courses.

How ACE Helps You: Faculty Benefits

  • Evaluation: The University's Faculty Evaluation System (FES) policy was modified to incorporate civic engagement, service-learning, community-based teaching strategies, or internships.
  • Recognition: A fourth University Excellence award, The David Payne Award for Academic Community Engagement, has been established to annually recognize an outstanding faculty member who teaches ACE courses. Only faculty teaching ACE courses are eligible for the $5,000 award.
  • Scholarly Opportunities: There are also many avenues through which to publish research relating to the integration of community engagement and curriculum. Other scholarly creative activities with the goal of contributing to the public good are also recognized as community engaged scholarship. 

ACE Courses Require:

  • The faculty member identifies one or more course objectives that students will address through their ACE experience.
  • A statement regarding the importance of community engagement is included in the syllabus.
  • The faculty member requires a reflection assignment about the ACE experience that is evaluative and graded as indicated in the course syllabus and included in the final course grade.
  • For every one hour of course credit, each student should dedicate a minimum of three hours to the ACE experience. For example, a 3-credit course would require a minimum of 9 hours on the ACE experience per student per semester.

Application Deadlines:

While The Center for Community Engagement will accept applications and renewals any time during the academic year, there are definite deadlines if the professor wants the ACE designation to appear on the Registrar’s official schedule of classes:

  • Spring Courses – October 15
  • Summer Courses – March 15
  • Fall Courses – March 15