Prof. Joseph Krupczynski Discusses Community Engagement and Social Change at Pizza & Prof

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On Thursday evening, renowned UMass professor of architecture, Joseph Krupczynski, took to the (virtual) stage for this semester’s first Pizza & Prof. The hour-long event was one of many unique opportunities offered exclusively to UMass Honors students to learn about a variety of topics from the experts themselves.

Ann Marie Russell, associate dean of student recruitment, inclusion, and success, introduced the speaker of the night and shared a few of the scholarships available to Honors students.

After the formalities had concluded, Professor Krupczynski held up a piece of paper with a sketch of a pizza. Under ideal circumstances, attendees would be eating pizza under the same roof discussing these critical issues. But what students lacked in cheesy goodness, Krupczynski made up for in inspiration.

Aside from being a professor, Krupczynski serves as the director of the Office of Civic Engagement and Service Learning at UMass, a position he leveraged to tell students about the perks of giving back. The goal of this department, also known as CESL, is to engage with students and help them to, in turn, engage with the community around them.

He explained that, through CESL, students should “recognize that they can combine their interest in community engagement with their academic coursework—and that working with a community partner through a service-learning course is a reciprocal process that supports community-identified goals while creating deep learning experiences.”

It is with CESL that Krupczynski gains the experience and credibility to speak to thousands of students each semester about the importance of engaging with your community and enacting social change whenever and wherever necessary.

“Civil engagement works in the public sphere...to address issues with significant public and social impact. It is the work of building a just democracy,” he explained about CESL and its civic engagement initiative. Krupczynski does more than just talk the talk, though; he walks the walk and even rides it.

He touched on some of his past civil engagement work, such as Moveable Feast which he collaborated with students and UMass faculty to create. The cart operated as part mobile food distributor and part art installation, with different sections of artwork plastered across the sides. “Each of the sections was a conversation about what should be made more visible in Holyoke,” said Krupczynski.

As helpful and involved as Krupczynski wants he and his students to be, he acknowledges there’s a much larger picture.

“We want to work with communities and engage with them about what their goals are. But we also talk about this critique of the 'savior’s model'—that we as great college students are going to do work in this poor community. We don’t use that model,” he explained.

The community service Krupczynski connects his students to is part of a bigger program easily accessible to Honors students. There are six ‘Core Programs’ offered to students to get them more involved with the Pioneer Valley community, including the Community Scholars Program, which places students in different community advocacy organizations over two years. To learn more about the other five programs, visit this page.

Despite the bulk of his work with students, Krupczynski and CESL offer a Faculty Fellows Program which meets once a month to guide faculty through creating a service-learning course geared toward their discipline. “The Faculty Fellows Program is in its 26th year, and every year we’ve had anywhere from 10 to 15 faculty in the program,” he explained. “That’s how we built up the cache for student service-learning programs on campus.”

Despite teaching only one class, the time Krupczynski pours into involving his students and giving back to the community creates the illusion that he could be teaching 10 classes. Like any good leader, he gets the energy he puts in back through faculty, staff, and, above all, his students. “We have a way of working together that is based on our values, we have a culture of care, we’re committed to equity and justice, and we value reciprocity,” he said.