Community Engagement
ENVR-40005
Community Engagement
Community Engagement is the process of working collaboratively with community members to address issues that impact their well-being, ensuring empowerment, social cohesion, ad locally tailored solutions. This course is designed for working professionals in environmental sustainability field who seek support in developing or improving their own initiatives to build capacity for engaging communities in meaningful and impactful ways. Students will acquire essential knowledge of community engagement principles, models and strategies, alongside practical skills for conducting needs assessments, developing commmunication strategies, facilitating participatory decision-making, and evaluating initiatives. Throighout the course, assignments will guide students step by step in developing their own community engagement projects, which they can apply in their professional or volunteer work. By the end of the course, participants will have a tailored community engagement plan ready for implementation, equipping them to drive sustainable change in their respective fields.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the basic definitions, history, and importance of community engagement.
- Analyze models of community engagement and their applicability in diverse contexts.
- Create stakeholder maps and identify key stakeholders for sustainability initiatives.
- Conduct community needs assessments using appropriate data collection methods.
- Engage storytelling and facilitation strategies to communicate clearly with communities.
- Develop effective communication strategies tailored to diverse audiences.
- Build cultural sensitivity into initiatives to promote equitable participation.
- Facilitate participatory decision-making processes using appropriate tools and techniques to integrate community input into program and project development.
- Evaluate community engagement initiatives using appropriate data collection methods.
Course Information
Course sessions
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This course is entirely web-based and to be completed asynchronously between the published course start and end dates. Synchronous attendance is NOT required.
You will have access to your online course on the published start date OR 1 business day after your enrollment is confirmed if you enroll on or after the published start date.
Textbooks:
All course materials are included unless otherwise stated.
Policies:
- No refunds after: 10/13/2025
Schedule:
Instructor:
Beth Karlin
Beth has published her work in venues ranging from Psychological Bulletin to Peace Studies and is a sought after speaker and trainer on Storytelling, Smart Homes, and the Social Science of Sustainability (and she loves alliteration). She is Past President of the American Psychological Association’s Division 34 (Environmental Psychology), U.S. National Expert on the International Energy Agency’s Demand-Side Management (DSM) Task 24 on Behavior Change, and a committee member on the National Academy of Sciences Environmental Health Matters Initiative. She also founded the Transformational Media Lab at the University of California, Irvine and served as Research Director at the University of Southern California’s Norman Lear Center, which studies the impact of entertainment on society.
Before receiving her Ph.D. in Social Ecology from UC Irvine, Beth spent nearly a decade working in K-12 education, holding positions as a teacher, counselor, and school administrator. She believes that the role of a researcher is not only to better understand the world but also to improve it and hopes that her work is able to serve both purposes.