Week 1 is here. Raise your hand if you’re excited to JUMP IN?    This course was first developed last year, and last summer was the first semester we taught it. You’d think it would be much easier, no big deal, since we’ve done it once, but all the excitement and feelings from last year are… Read More

  Greetings bipeds/urban biking students! The first meeting of our CMST391: Urban Biking Benefits course is fast approaching! (Pro Tip: it’s August 26th at 5:45pm in Scuffletown Park, Strawberry Street, Richmond, VA 23220, United States!).  Our classroom will be mobile, and we will meet at a different location on the date of each class. Be there, on two wheels with… Read More

    This Fall semester, VCU launches a series of bike-themed undergraduate courses that coincide with the 9-day international bike race (UCI Road Worlds Champtionship) held this year in Richmond! This is huge for us, largely because it’s Richmond, not Portland, and unlike the Olympics or a Super Bowl, for example, the cycling events happen in the city streets, not in an… Read More

Today’s Challenge: Take a photo of your desk as is. What story does your desk tell? The objects? The space? Don’t move anything or rearrange it to be more appealing. Just snap it and upload it with tag CENR2. More information here.… Read More

  Today’s Challenge People have many different views on what community means. Think hard about what it means to you and create a visual representation that conveys your beliefs about community. It could be a photograph you take, a drawing, a collage, or something we haven’t thought of- just make it visual and make it… Read More

  VCU’s Division of Community Engagement recently invited Barbara Holland, Ph.D., Higher Ed Consultant, to visit, inspire, and provoke thoughtfulness about community engagement, partnerships and VCU. Through a series of discussions, Barbara posed questions and comments to consider as a university, as educators, as researchers, but also as leaders, as decision-makers, as advocates, as change-agents, as entrepreneurs, and so… Read More

  We all know that a good movie trailer teases and entices the viewer, even if the movie launches six months later. So worth the wait, right? We’re hoping the CMST 691’s course trailer will build the buzz and share a sneak peek into this MOOC online course without spoiling the magical ending. Stay tuned. Monday, Feb 16 is… Read More

Not to be confused with motherboard or mothership, we are about to Motherblog. MOTHERBLOG Verb. To link food to; supply with nourishment; aggregate shared knowledge. Noun. A location that syndicates the childblogs or the many, many individual blogs of the course. This here is a childblog. Within hours we will connect this baby to its mother.  Happy, magical endings…  Photo yoinked… Read More

There are experts who study mathematical algorithms for matchmaking dating apps and use surveys to predict interpersonal chemistry between humans based on profile pics and awkward questionnaires. It’s brilliant and very complicated as you might expect. What if we had a matchmaking app that will ‘match’ academics with community-identified needs and organizations in the Richmond metropolitan area? It’s just like eHarmony,… Read More

Every morning I walk by a Little Free Library where books are offered and shared for free in a small container that looks like a schoolhouse.  I sometimes monitor the book exchange and see what books come and go.  Who reads that much Dr. Phil McGraw?  The intrigue is that the book exchange is anonymous, and creates a link… Read More

                I am eager to report to the blogosphere about yesterday’s meeting during which we decided not only on a course title, but also a hashtag.  We are close to 85% certain that the course will be titled “Collaborative Curiosity: Designing Community-Engaged Research,” but there’s still time to rename the… Read More

Things are happening in the development arena of the online community-engaged research course.  A special thanks to  VCU’s ALT lab Agora. They are pro-active, pro-ductive, and pro-fessional hashtaggers.  I should also mention that this is the pro-community engagement blog.   Thanks for following! Here’s an image of our first major brainstorm of the “Course.”  It was carefully… Read More