Founded at Rockford College in the early 1990s, our community-based learning program is based on the conviction that Rockford College is a citizen of the community and that the community has a stake in Rockford College, as well. The work that the students perform serves the dual function of providing a defined need for the community while also fulfilling a specific learning objective determined by the professor.

Our Mission Statement

Support Rockford College students in reflective experiential learning through community partnerships, local-to-global, that provide mutually positive educational outcomes.

Our Vision Statement

Rockford College will encourage students to practice good citizenship by offering a variety of CBL learning experiences.

Rockford College will link the classroom to the community for a mutually beneficial learning experience.

Rockford College will promote a sense of social activism in our students through CBL courses and community partnerships.

Recent examples of community-based learning in our classrooms

As part of their community-based learning work, students in Professor Wealtha Helland's Community Health Nursing course (Fall 2004) helped clients at Rockford 's Carpenter's Place, an agency for the chronically homeless, design and create this mural (the image at the top of this page) which now hangs by the entrance way of Carpenter's Place.

Dr. Jerry Caton's Community Services Math class students are involved in a number of community projects such as tutoring school children in math and computer work.

The Oral Interpretation class of Dr. Rufus Cadigan performed fiction pieces for the Wesley Willows retirement community and non-fiction biographies of homeless people at a service during Hunger and Homelessness week.

During the Spring/Summer 2005 semesters, Social Action in London with a community-based learning component was taught by Dr. Catherine Forslund. The course was a comparative examination of the U.S. progressive and the British settlement house movements of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Through the study of figures like Jane Addams and Samuel Barnett, students explored the social conditions that necessitated these social movements on both sides of the Atlantic as well as learning about the connections between the two movements and the solutions both offered for the societies of their times.

As part of the CBL component for the class, students wrote a history of The Carpenter’s Place which is a day-service provider for the homeless in Rockford. At the end of the course there was a two week visit to London with an additional CBL experience at Toynbee Hall, a leading settlement house of the British movement under study. This second CBL experience gave students excellent connections to the scholarly material studied during the Spring semester of coursework.

Praise for the Community-based Learning Program at Rockford College

From an Alumna

Tamra Meisheid, an alumna from the class of 1998, has this to say about her community-based Learning experiences at Rockford College: “Community-based learning was an invaluable part of my undergraduate education. It was a unique experience, which taught me lessons that were not attainable in just a classroom setting. Those lessons remained with me through law school and even now as a practicing attorney. No other outlets exist for students to combine what they learn in the classroom with the real world.”

From an agency

Here’s what Northern Illinois Hospice and Grief Counseling Center wrote about our students who worked with the Center in a community-based learning project: “The Rockford College Nursing students more than met our expectations when they completed their community-based learning projects with us. They were always well-prepared and worked independently. We’ve certainly used their work to help us.”

From a Professor

Dr. Christine Bruun, Professor of Psychology, writes, “In my Psychological Disorders class (Psych 357), students volunteer a minimum of 12 hours of their time at Jubilee Center, a drop-in center for the mentally ill, where members take an ownership role in planning activities and policies. The psychology students participate at the Center by engaging in conversation and activities with the members. They also assist the Psychology Society in hosting an annual Halloween party. Each year, both the members and students, almost unanimously, report how meaningful their interaction turns out to be.”

From Dr. Richard Kneedler, Interim President of Rockford College:

Dear friends:

Rockford College pledges to offer students a practical education grounded in the liberal arts. I can think of no better example of this than the Community Based Learning (CBL) courses taking place on our campus and throughout Rockford. CBL is our principal strategy for engaging our neighbors in a proactive way, as we work to achieve our goal to be “Jane Addams’ College for the 21st Century.”

Miss Addams cautioned in her book “Twenty Years at Hull House” against what she called “the snare of preparation.” I understand this caution, in part, as a warning about stagnant learning environments, where young adults go to college filled with enthusiasm and ambition only to sit in classrooms for four years as their idealistic aspirations are drowned in dated and overly technical “preparation” for a world that will have disappeared before they graduate. The liberal arts tradition avoids this snare, in part, because its intellectual underpinnings are timeless. CBL complements that foundational work of the classroom and seminar with timely and dynamic learning opportunities outside of the classroom. CBL, critically, allows Rockford College’s students apply the insights of the liberal arts in worthwhile work for community organizations as they accumulate invaluable, practical experience that will provide them tools for use during the rest of their lives.

We are excited about the relationships we have built with agencies in the community and we plan to reach out and build more. Thank you for taking the time to learn about Community Based Learning. We are proud that the College holds the ideal of engagement as a top priority and we look forward to your personal involvement in the ongoing challenge of making that ideal an educational and social reality.

Dr. Richard Kneedler
Interim President
Rockford College