The Center for Community Development and Social Justice (CCDSJ) provides support, consultation, and resources for civic-engaged learning opportunities among members of the University of Lynchburg and greater Lynchburg communities.
Its offerings include, among other things:
- Supporting faculty efforts to develop service-learning courses.
- Oversight for the approval of credit-bearing service-learning courses, civic-engaged pedagogy and teaching methods.
- Infusion of high-impact, community-engaged practices in the study of social justice topics across the undergraduate and graduate curricula.
Center staff collaborate frequently with colleagues in the Center for Career Engagement Opportunities. CCDSJ and CEC are co-awardees of a Community-Engaged Learning (CEL) Initiative grant from the Bonner Foundation.
The CCDSJ is committed to promoting relationships, on and off campus, that center around community-defined social justice needs and priorities. Recently, CCDSJ was the lead University partner with a local grassroots racial justice organization for the sixth annual Race, Poverty, and Social Justice Conference held at the University in January 2020.
The CCDSJ was created in 1996 with the purpose of supporting sustainable community outreach and advocacy initiatives between the institution and the greater Lynchburg area that focus on issues of social justice. The center was established through an endowment by Rosel H. Schewel ’71 MEd, ’83 EdS and Elliot S. Schewel.
