Community Scholars Program

Build community, create change.

photo of students under a tree

The Community Scholars Program (CSP) is a two-year academic community engagement program that works in collaboration with community organizations and movements to advocate for a more just world. Working with groups throughout western Massachusetts and sometimes beyond, CSP students contribute to meaningful social change projects in response to critical challenges and explore possibilities for building a more equitable world.



 

ENGAGEMENT AREAS

Reproductive Justice 
Students work in small groups (4-6) on a sustained community project or effort. In Fall 2023/Spring 2024, students are working with DARLA (Doula Association for Reproductive Loss and Abortion), the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Mass and University Health Services to create a medication abortion doula program on the UMass campus. 

Abolition 
Students work in small groups (4-6) on a sustained community project or effort. In Fall 2023/Spring 2024, students are working on campus with the Prison Abolition Coalition and Dissenters, and off campus with Northampton Abolition Now and Decarcerate Western Mass.

Land Back/Climate
Students work in small groups (4-6) on a sustained community project or effort. In Fall 2023/Spring 2024, students are involved with the potential rematriation of Lampson Brook Farm in Belchertown to the Nipmuc Tribe. They are also beginning work on a multi-year initiative to create a database of land back and land decommodification efforts across the U.S.

Mutual Aid
Students work in small groups (4-6) on a sustained community project or effort. In Fall 2023/Spring 2024, students are joining the UMass Mutual Aid Project, which holds regular “thing swaps,” maps anti-capitalist efforts across campus and is engaged in research that will lead to the creation of a time bank.

 

 

Contact:

Deborah Keisch
CESL Senior Lecturer / Program Director, Community Scholars Program
(917) 816-5811

Outcomes: 

  • Demonstrate the ability to translate thought into action through meaningful social change projects that engage policy, political mobilization, grassroots organizing, action research, and/or advocacy
     
  • Learn from and collaborate with community members, facilitate reciprocal access to and from community and university resources, and collectively build capacity for change
     
  • Build a classroom learning community where compassion and care are central to our work and knowledge building