Community-Based Education with U-Links
*Note: Our 'Host Manual' (Community Organizations section) is currently being updated to reflect program and form changes which include Service-Learning projects as well as Community-Based Research projects. We appreciate your patience as we work to bring you these updates.
About Community-Based Education & Research
What is the Community-Based Education Program?
The Community-Based Education Program is a new approach to experiential learning. Through this program, university and college students are matched with community organizations in the Haliburton area to assist them with research, planning, or community service and development projects. While earning course credit, students are able to gain practical experience in their field of study and help to solve current challenges in the community.
U-Links delivers the Community-Based Education (CBE) program in partnership with the Trent Centre for Community-Based Education at Trent University in Peterborough. U-Links facilitates projects within Haliburton County, whereas the TCCBE facilitates projects in Peterborough. Currently, U-Links works almost solely with Trent students, but we are also developing a partnership with Sir Sandford Fleming College.
What is Service-Learning?
Academic service-learning is a pedagogical model that intentionally integrates community service, academic learning, and civic learning. It is a response to the call for higher education to take responsibility for preparing active citizens for a diverse democracy. In service-learning courses, students are involved in the community in ways that are relevant to the academic content of the course. (from U of Michigan)
What is Community-Based Research?
Community-based research (CBR) is the collection, organization, and analysis of information to answer a question that is of interest to members of the community. This information could be of a historic, scientific, social, demographic, economic, or environmental nature. Community-based research helps the community learn more about itself and assists the community in making informed decisions.
Project Placements can be research or service focused, or a combination of the two. All project placements are designed to help community organizations to fulfill their mandates and could result in finding the answers to specific questions, creating a resource, or spending time at the organization, etc.
The Process:
- U-Links helps host organizations design a project/placement and write a proposal.
- This proposal is then promoted to students and faculty at Trent University, and matched with a university student interested in doing service for academic credit.
- The student, host organization, supervising professor, and U-Links work together to create a Project Placement Agreement that covers the details of the placement.
- The student then carries out the project as defined above.
- Any resulting reports are made available to the public through the Haliburton County Collection, located at the U-Links Centre.
Support community-based research in Haliburton County
U-Links is a non-profit organization that welcomes financial contributions from the community. Our organization does not charge a fee for the services it provides to host organizations. We have worked primarily with non-profit groups that may not have the capacity to conduct research themselves, or the means to pay for it to be undertaken on their behalf.
U-Links has grown to become a significant resource in Haliburton County in terms of meeting the research needs of this community. Although we receive some funding from Trent University, U-Links must raise more than half of its annual budget itself. Your contribution is very much appreciated!