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Get Involved in Engaged Scholarship

There are a lot of ways to get involved in engaged scholarship. Below are just a few starting points.

Engaged Scholarship Courses

The Lang Center works with faculty and the Registrar to designate certain courses as "ESCH," or Engaged Scholarship courses. Engaged Scholarship is a term first popularized by Ernest Boyer (1996) that has been rapidly gaining popularity at peer institutions. It encompasses Community-Based Learning (CBL), but also a broader range of teaching and research that, in Boyer’s words, connect “the rich resources of the university to our most pressing social, civic, and ethical problems.” Engaged Scholarship denotes an orientation. Engaged scholars direct their energies not solely toward an academic community, or toward the life of the mind—a valuable orientation in its own right, which resides at the liberal arts’ core—but also toward pressing public issues or shared problems. The Lang Center supports Engaged Scholarship (while fully endorsing the value of traditional scholarship and learning for the sake of learning). Swarthmore College identifies ESCH courses as those that:

  • address a contemporary issue of pressing public concern;
  • build knowledge about how to ameliorate social problems;
  • produce work that engages with various publics and/or includes a community-based learning component 

Learn more about Engaged Scholarship here. To find the current list of Engaged Scholarship Courses, click here [SwatDoc]. 

Faculty-Led Engaged Research (FLER)

The Lang Center supports students to conduct research with Swarthmore College faculty member's Engaged Scholarship through the Faculty-Led Engaged Research Grant (FLER) Program. Check out previous research projects and learn more on the FLER webpage. 

Lang Center Newsletter

During the academic year, the Lang Center publishes a weekly newsletter to help keep campus and community members informed about news and announcements, upcoming events, and opportunities. We invite you to sign-up to receive our newsletter for weekly updates.