Community-Engagement at George Mason University

Community Engagement and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Affordances and Challenges of Service Learning in Crisis. Ed. Tawnya Azar. Vernon Press, 2025. https://vernonpress.com/book/2318

HNRS 260: Community Writing and Food Insecurity

This course will examine the issue of food scarcity facing different communities inside the U.S. and the role that collaborative, community-based writing has had and might have in addressing this issue. As part of the course, students will volunteer at one of several local/regional/national organizations whose mission is to address food scarcity for different communities. Additionally, we will develop an awareness campaign to engage with the Mason campus community about this issue. Through these acts of community engagement and advocacy, we will explore what it means to write with, for, and about the issue of food scarcity and the communities most affected as well as what role community-engaged writing should have in tackling issues like this.

See news coverage of this class here.

Faculty Associate for Community Engaged Teaching & Learning Support, Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning and Office of Community Engagement and Civic Learning, 2022

The CETL Faculty Associate works closely with the Stearns Center Directors and team members, as well as other faculty and staff engaged in work around equitable and inclusive pedagogy and provides support for faculty through development of online resources and creation of interactive programming to build Mason faculty members’ capacity for creating equitable, community-engaged classrooms.

HNRS 261: Bridging the Digital Divide

This Honors College course examines the issue of the digital divide through critical readings and discussions. Students participate in the Digital Inclusion Week campaign and consult with for-profit stakeholders (Google, Microsoft, Compass Datacenters) and non-profit stakeholders (NDIA and Computer Core) who are invested in the topic of the digital divide. Using a Design Thinking model, students prepare prototypes and pitches to deliver to our community partners for their feedback.

See news coverage of my Fall 2021 students’ advocacy work here.

ENG 101 CE: Digital Literacies and the Digital Divide

These classes explore how we might apply the principles of writing to community needs. Specifically, students committed to a certain number of volunteer hours with community organizations, participated in an awareness campaign, and conducted academic research relevant to their chosen community partner which they presented as a poster at the GMU OSCAR Celebration of Student Scholarship. Leaders from our community partners came to meet students in class to describe their organizations and they were invited to review the students’ research posters at the OSCAR celebration.

Volunteering

Food Pantry Volunteer – Grains of Hope

Other Community Work

Consultant on the Digital Divide – Infrastructure Masons

IMasons has recently embarked on an initiative to tackle the digital divide by raising awareness with its corporate members and offering scholarship/grant funding to students and researchers working on the digital divide. I consult with them about the latest research and the many facets of the digital divide.