On April 30, 2024, the Office of Community-Engaged Learning (CELO) held their annual awards ceremony recognizing the faculty members, students, and community partners who have gone above and beyond in their support of community-engaged learning at ̽̽ through an impressive array of service- and civic-learning courses. And there are many of them: In 2023, a full 20 percent of ̽̽ students participated in over 100 community-engaged courses.
This is no small thing for a land-grant institution like ̽̽ that prides itself on its support of community partners through the lens of hands-on learning. “Experiential learning is a cornerstone of the liberal arts, providing students with the opportunity to learn and practice their exceptional transferable skills,” says Bill Falls, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS). This year, one CAS department demonstrated a particularly keen commitment to this kind of community-engaged learning: the Department of Geography and Geosciences. Three of the four 2024 CELO awardees with connections to CAS received their awards based on work done within or for this department.
One of those awards was the Lynne Bond Outstanding Service-Learning Faculty Award, which was presented to geography and geosciences professor (and Vermont state climatologist) Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux. She was nominated by Sandra Wilmot from the Underhill Planning Commission for the Climatology and Natural Hazards service-learning class Dupigny-Giroux taught in the fall of 2022, during which she and her students collaborated with the Town of Underhill, as well as state and federal agencies, to create a hazard-mitigation plan to help the town fight the effects of climate change. (For more on this project, check out this article.)
In her nomination letter, Wilmot praised Dupigny-Giroux for her passion for projects that connect students with the community. “Her commitment to improving education for her students and showing them that education has many valuable applications to society is to be commended,” she wrote. “I heard one student say that she found this project taught her more than all the rest of her college courses. Seeing the connections between what you're learning in school and how to make a positive impact on society is the ultimate goal. Dr. Dupigny-Giroux deserves all the credit!”
For Dupigny-Giroux, this approach has become an integral part of her teaching philosophy. “Service learning has forever changed the way I teach in all my classes, large or small. It has truly allowed me to meld my research, teaching, and outreach to Vermont into what I call ‘science in the service of society,’” she says. “I learned so much from Lynne Bond about how to be a reflective teacher-scholar and fully bring this practice into all of my climatology classes. Receiving this award that has been named in her honor is one of my most cherished moments at ̽̽.”
Geography and geosciences came to the fore again during the presentation of the Student Leadership in Community-Engaged Learning awards, one of which was given to Jacob Ladue ‘24, a civil/environmental engineering and forestry double-major who was honored for his work as a service-learning teaching assistant (TA) in Professor Beverley Wemple’s Geomorphology class. During his time working as a TA, Ladue helped develop a two-year record of changes connected with a stream restoration project. “He encouraged engagement, discovery, and creativity that contributed positively to the final products developed by small groups of students,” Wemple wrote in her nomination letter. “He was professional, thoughtful, and highly supportive of student learning throughout the course experience, making a very important contribution to student learning and to our relationship with these community partners.”
Prue Doherty of ̽̽ Special Collections was awarded an Outstanding Community Partner award for her decade-long work with geography professor Cherie Morse’s community-engaged courses, rounding out the department’s trio of awards. In her nomination letter, Morse wrote warmly of Doherty’s dedication to service learning. “Whenever I have an opportunity for students to learn from Prue, I take it, because lessons with Prue always open up a world of creative research resources,” she wrote, concluding, “She does her work out of passion for learning and a commitment to serving the community through empowering others.”
A fourth CAS-related awardee, psychological sciences major Avery Gilgallon ’24 was honored for her work as a TA in two different service-learning courses. In her nomination letter, plant biology instructor Laura Hill praised Gilgallon for her enthusiasm for community-engaged learning and talent for helping students develop important skills connected with the service-learning experience. “In the above-and-beyond characteristic typical of Avery, she also helped students identify community partners as key people in their network and offered suggestions in how to connect with them further to continue the work,” she noted.
Thanks to the passion and dedication of faculty members like Dupigny-Giroux, students like Ladue and Gilgallon, departments like Geography and Geosciences, and others, learning at ̽̽ often extends far beyond the classroom to become an innovative way to create meaningful change in our local communities. We celebrate them for their achievements and the profound impact they are having in our world.