As our world struggles to address the multiple crises of the pandemic, pervasive racial injustice, and climate degradation, IARSLCE seeks to gather scholars and practitioners of service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) to envision our way forward. The past year has simultaneously fostered deep isolation alongside hyperconnectivity, forged new ways of doing work while continuing to shackle us to longstanding ideologies of capitalist exploitation of labor, and exacerbated entrenched social inequities while raising collective consciousness about the pervasiveness of these inequities. In other words, every complex challenge that has presented itself has a corollary opportunity for effecting positive change.
We know that you have found ways to keep your engaged research and teaching relevant and impactful through this tumultuous time. We know that you’ve exhibited creativity, flexibility, and dedication in sustaining and adapting your partnerships to navigate barriers and embrace new opportunities for collaboration. And we know that you have missed opportunities to network and explore ideas with your peers. The stories of your work should be shared, celebrated, mined for lessons to learn, and curated into a foundation for our field’s next iterations.
We invite you to join us online November 15-17, 2021 to rebuild, strengthen, and expand our scholarly community while co-creating future directions for service-learning and community engagement research. Our virtual gathering will include opportunities to consider reflections from prominent scholars; discuss timely ideas, dilemmas, inquiry lines, and problems of practice with peers; and discover emerging and evolving research in our field. Most importantly, we will rekindle and reaffirm our connections to each other, and to our broader communities, by sharing space and building relationships of solidarity and coalition.
Our goals for this gathering are to:
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Provide a forum for scholar-practitioners to present and get feedback about their current SLCE research
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Offer opportunities for participants to network and take part in conversations about issues that are critical to the field
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Build individual and collective capacity to enact engaged scholarship that responds to pressing and enduring issues around the world and supports ongoing movements for equity, justice, and sustainability
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Weave together a community of respect, solidarity, and collaboration among engaged scholars and practitioners
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, and strengthen commitments to our home communities
Planning Committee Co-Chairs:
Susan Harris, University of Southern California, IARSLCE Conference Content Committee Chair
Star Plaxton-Moore, University of San Francisco, IARSLCE Special Programming Chair
REGISTER HERE: https://www.researchslce.org/2021-virtual-gathering