Community Program Delivery and Evaluation GART/SOSC 2050

Community Engagement and Evaluation (GART/SOSC 2050) iis an innovative community-based partnership between the University of Windsor and ProsperUs designed to teach post-secondary students practical skills to support future career aspirations across various sectors through a two-semester program. The course is co-taught by University of Windsor faculty, staff from the Backbone organization United Way/Centraide Windsor-Essex County, and features guest speakers from across the ProsperUs collective. It was launched in 2021 and will be offered again in the upcoming 2022-2023 academic calendar.

Semester one, offered in Fall 2022, sets the theoretical and contextual foundation for service learning, community engagement, and evaluation. It helps students develop critical skills utilized in a community setting using experiential activities, including:

Reflecting on diversity and equity issues in our community and learning about the socio-economic context in Windsor-Essex
Directly engaging community members to collect first-hand experiences of neighbourhood circumstances
Leveraging Human-Centered Design principles to develop solutions to the identified challenges
Gaining experience with principles of evaluation and data collection by developing an evaluation plan, analyzing data, and creating a story with the data
Receiving resume and career support and participating in a formal interview process before placement

Community leaders, practitioners, and residents involved in the ProsperUs project will join the class through a guest speaker series.

After successfully completing the first semester and an interview process, students will be eligible for a paid internship in the Winter semester. These positions will support children, youth, and families in a program setting within three target neighbourhoods in Windsor-Essex County. Students will apply their learnings to help program outcomes and evaluate the success of the programs with the support of the Backbone team.

“I really appreciated the variety of topics we discussed in this course. I felt as though everything was relevant to our surrounding community and could be applied to my Sociology & Criminology degree as well as my everyday life. We worked individually as well as with partners and connected with local organizations all working to make a collective impact in Windsor-Essex. The course and the internship were great experiences that challenged my perspectives and helped me develop skills in community engagement.” – University of Windsor Student