Mount Holyoke College • Vista • Spring 2013, Vol. 18, No. 1


Connecting Learning and Social Action
Each year, ambitious Mount Holyoke students tackle real-world issues as Community-Based Learning (CBL) Fellows working with local nonprofits, schools, and municipal agencies. These highly sought-after positions provide paid academic-year internships in the arenas of community organizing, health, education, college access, youth development, environmental advocacy, and social and economic justice.


In addition, some students serve as CBL Mentors, which involves assisting faculty teaching CBL courses in a range of disciplines or mentoring students who are working in the community on ways to advance the partner agency’s aims and their own learning.


“CBL Fellows make a yearlong commitment to developing their critical analysis of social issues, and applying their academic learning to urgent social challenges,” said Alan Bloomgarden, coordinator of CBL. “These are demanding positions that require a commitment of time and passion as well as responsibility and maturity. But the rewards are many. CBL Fellows develop advocacy and career skills through collabo- rations with community leaders in South Hadley, Springfield, Holyoke, Amherst, Northampton, and beyond.”


CBL Fellows are supported by academic course work, including two 2-credit courses: Networking, Reflection, and Meaning (fall); and Integrating Learning, Service, and Social Action (spring). Bloomgarden, who teaches both courses, involves community leaders as coeducators whenever possible. He constructs the courses to develop students’ abilities to plan, implement, and evaluate capacity-building projects among nonprofit and educational organizations. Students also develop cultural competencies needed to enter and succeed in diverse communities, build teamwork and collaborative skills, and develop concepts of social action and citizenship that they can carry with them for life.


This year, CBL awarded fellowships to 40 students. Their responsibilities, which were determined together by the students and the staff of their community agency, include researching and developing surveys at the Holyoke Office of Planning and Development; and creating Run the World, Girls!, a program aimed at increasing the number of girls from low-income families who graduate high school and pursue a college education (supported by a grant from the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts).

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