Engaged Learning Opportunities

The Department of English recognizes that experiential learning opportunities are an increasingly important component of many students’ college portfolio. Whether pursued on-campus or off, independently or through credit-bearing courses, they offer students a chance to engage with local communities and to explore connections between their academic interests, on the one hand, and their social commitments and personal aspirations on the other.The department’s experiential learning offerings for 2019-20 include the following:

Individual Courses:

• English 126: Community-Engaged Writing - A first-year writing course, developed and offered in partnership with the Ginsberg Center, exploring how various forms of public writing can accomplish in-the-world goals and change communities for the better
  

• English 322: Community Journalism - A practical, fieldwork-based course co-taught with a team of professional local journalists and resulting in a polished piece of long-form journalistic writing.
  

• English 344.1: Digital Publishing for the English Community -  A writing course focusing on book reviews, profiles, and other genres on the topic of literature and writing on campus, Ann Arbor, and here in English. Students will also have the option of reporting on interesting projects in other English classes, creating a student-produced course magazine that will become part of the public face of UM English.
  

• English 425 (selected sections): Immersion Writing: Truth, Fact, and Art - An introduction to the theory and practice of an approach to reality-based story telling that has become the dominant mode of creative nonfiction.

Special Programs:

• Great Lakes Writers Corps: This new program offers aspiring writers with an interest in regional issues a structured three-part sequence of hands-on training opportunities including introduction to literary journalism, a funded summer research placement, and a production course resulting  in the creation of a potentially publishable long-form story or podcast.
  

• Great Lakes Arts, Cultures, & Environments (GLACE): An interdisciplinary, 8-credit program on the theme of place-making offered at the U-M BioStation in the Spring term.
  

• Writing with Purpose: Michigan Blue Communitiies: This experimental two-term course sequence, offered in partnership with Michigan Engaged Community through the Classroom (MECC), combines site-based learning with training in literary journalism through participatory exploration of Traverse City's efforts to become a "blue community."
  

• New England Literature Program (NELP): An intensive 9-credit program on major New England writers offered at New Hampshire’s Camp Cabeyun in the Spring term each year.
  

• Summer Undergraduate Internship Program: High quality, funded internships in journalism and other fields for declared English majors and minors.

Additional resources for students interested in experiential learning and community engagement include:

• Camp Davis

• Edward Ginsberg Center

• LSA Opportunity Hub

• U-M Career Center

• Global Michigan