Community Engaged Learning and Teaching is considered to be transformative for students and practitioners, underpinned by civic participation in community and society. One of the strategic themes of the UCD Rising to the Future Strategy is “Building a Healthy World” a core objective of which is to “continue to build our engagement locally, nationally and internationally”. Community Engaged Learning (CEL) and Teaching affords the University an opportunity to build and strengthen strong partnerships with social and community organisations in a meaningful and transformative way. It provides faculty, students and community organisations opportunities to engage in a symbiotic manner, learning from each other whilst bridging the gap between academic learning and the lived reality(ies) of society.
About this initiative
The Levitus project sought to bring all stakeholders involved in engineering education within three institutions together to talk about and reflect upon professional development within their discipline and to look at ways in which they might best be supported and their professional development enhanced. Evidence was built on the professional development needs of engineers and small-scale professional development initiatives were funded across the partner institutions. A conceptual framework for the engineering community for thinking about professional development was then developed and aligned to the National Professional Development Framework, so that there is now a clear path articulated for professional development as an ‘engineer’ through teaching and learning activities. The intention is that this model will be recognized by professional bodies, and more widely across institutions and the subject disciplines. This conceptual framework will be published on this page when finalised.
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