MECC
Michigan Engaging Community Through the Classroom
The purpose of this initiative is to provide multi-disciplinary, experiential learning opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students pursuing professional careers that involve direct public service or that engage work on behalf of public clients and non-governmental organizations (e.g., urban planning, public policy, public health, law, engineering, environmental management, social work, information science, business, natural resources). These professions require advanced knowledge and technical skills along with the ability to apply those skills in complex settings. More importantly, success in these professions—however measured—increasingly requires that professionals have the ability to collaborate intelligently with professionals from other allied disciplines. That requires, in turn, gaining educational experiences that involve multi-disciplinary, experiential
The University of Michigan does not currently have a means dedicated especially to integrating the teaching and public service missions of the university that can support this kind of multi-unit, learning-service collaboration. Addressing that gap, a group of faculty and program staff undertook the MECC initiative three years ago to facilitate such an educational initiative. The Transformation project will extend and formalize these efforts, enabling us to scale the initiative to serve at least an additional 700 or more students over next few years.
The three primary methods of creating this transformative experience are as follows:
- Experiencing a shared classroom experience to discuss methodologies, ideas, and findings. The team is also designing innovative exercises during the shared classroom time to foster communication skills, test adaptability, and help students stretch beyond their educational “comfort zone.”
- Scheduling collective client interviews, research trips, and guest presentations. Students see and hear first-hand how other disciplines approach a situation in the wording of questions, framing of priorities, and engagement in interpersonal communication more broadly.
- Collaborating on a shared final presentation to the project clients and larger public. The need to clearly and simply communicate to multiple clients in a single presentation forces students to not rely on technical terminology (jargon) or one unique set of values. It is especially through the deliberation required to synthesize the combined story, findings, and recommendations for such a final presentation that the transformative experience becomes evident to MECC participants.
Key goals include:
- Identify and engage communities that could benefit substantially from the coordinated efforts of community-focused course projects involving multiple academic units;
- Enhance the multidisciplinary educational benefits provided to the students;
- Facilitate interactions among the course instructors to promote additional teaching, research, and service endeavors; and
- Facilitate interactions among community clients to build relationships and create commitment to carrying forward the students’ work once the courses are done.
Project Team
Elisabeth Gerber, Ford School
Gail Hohner, College of Engineering
Patricia Koman, School of Public Health
Jim Kosteva, Government Relations
Richard K. Norton, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Pla
- 21st Century Artist Internships
- 3D Printing
- 4T Virtual Conference
- ABL Redesign
- Action Based Collaborative Approach to Teaching
- Actively Learning Sustainability
- AE-VACI
- Air Supply
- ARD
- Art in Public Spaces
- ArtsLab
- Barger Leadership Bridge Institute
- Basic Training
- Big Data
- Black Art, White Cube
- Bluecorps
- Bridging Practice to Theory
- Campus Farm
- CATS
- Changing the Way We Teach the Ancient World – Assessment
- Cleveland Design Lab
- CLOSUP in the Classroom
- Common Reading Experience
- Community Engagement Consortium
- Community Immersion
- Community Stories
- Community-Based Learning
- Compute to Learn
- Computing CARES
- Construction
- Construction as a Stimulus Hub
- Contested Borders and Immigration Enforcement
- Cultural Entrepreneurship Initiative
- Cumulative Skills Problems
- Declare
- Deliberative Learning
- Detroit Center Connector
- Dialogues In Feminism
- Digital Archiving of Reconstructed Performance
- Digital Badges
- Digital Signal Processing
- Digital Writing
- El Sistema
- ENGAGING THE ARCHIVES
- Engaging Visually Disabled Students in Science
- Flipped Classroom
- Food System
- Gameful Assessment in Michigan Education (GAME)
- Genetics Laboratory
- Global Feminism Archive
- Graduate Students
- Great Lakes History
- Health Policy Residential Course
- Health, Biology and Society Course
- Heritage Datascape
- Human-Centered Design
- Hybrid Modular Courses
- I Want to Make a Difference
- i-Newton
- Innovation In Action
- Inquiry-Based Learning – Astronomy
- Inquiry-Based Learning Training
- Interactive Satellite Solar Lab
- Interprofessional Service-Learning
- Into the Wind
- Intro Physics Labs
- Journal of Medicine
- Journey to Inner Space
- Kelsey Museum of Archaeology
- Liberating Lens: Jewish Photographers
- LIFE Project
- Living Lab Program
- Maestro
- Making Music
- Making Physics Real
- Medical Device Sandbox
- Memory, Aging & Expressive Arts
- Mentoring in Linguistics
- Michigan Makers
- Multidisciplinary Experiences
- Museum of Art Exchange
- Nursing Education
- ON SITE: Teaching Architecture in the Mobile Classroom
- On the Drawing Board
- Online Tool
- Personalizing Education at Scale
- Polish Theatre Lab
- Predicting the Academic Success of Students (PASS)
- Preparing Our Community
- Prison Course
- Queer Ecologies
- REIMAGINING CITIZENSHIP
- Roots Music Immersion
- Ross Leaders Academy
- SecondLook Computer Tablet Applications
- Self-Regulated Learning in Public Health Guided by Principles of Innovation
- Senior Design Experience
- Sensors for Intelligent Infrastructure
- Side-By-Side
- SLIP
- Social Work Services to African American Families
- STEM Studio
- STEM-IPLC
- Student Partnerships in Arts and Technology
- Sustainable Design
- Tactile Technologies for Play and Learning
- Teacher and Social Work Competencies
- Team Action Projects in Surgery
- Team Projects in Engineering
- TECH/Organic Technology
- Transactional Lab
- Translation Interface
- Transportation to Botanical Gardens
- UMSI Design Clinic
- Undergraduate Internships
- Virtual Dissection in Kinesiology and Dentistry
- Virtual Dissection in Nursing
- Virtual Reality Environment
- Virtual Translation
- webzyme
- Whole Engineer