CESP Sessions

Upcoming RAP Sessions:


Leveraging Community-Engaged Learning to Explore and Build Your Career Skills 
Thursday, March 28, from 4:30-5:30pm | Tate Hall Room 110

Join the Center for Community-Engaged Learning and faculty who teach community-engaged learning (CEL) courses in a wide variety of departments across campus, both inside and outside the College of Liberal Arts. Each faculty member will talk about their course learning objectives and the types of community organizations they partner with, as well as the academic, personal, and professional benefits they have seen their students gain from CEL. These include opportunities to gain professional experience, practice networking, and developing skills in high demand with employers. Come learn more and start planning which CEL course(s) you’ll take in the future!

Click here to register!


Scholar and Poet Evie Shockley: "Black Graphics: Slavery and Black Women's Bodies (of Work)"
Thursday, March 28, 2:30-4:00pm CT | Online Event 

Dr. Evie Shockley, Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University, offers excerpts from her work-in-progress, a book of interlinked mini-essays titled Black Graphics: "Colorblindness" and the Survival of Black Being. The project investigates how Black cultural production between roughly 1990 and 2015 engaged, interrogated, or made use of the dominant racial logic of the period: the ideology of "colorblindness." Her research examines poetry and other artwork that situates itself at the intersection of text and image, or the verbal and the visual. This talk takes up work by Renee Gladman, Julie Patton, and Kamau Brathwaite, among others. Professor of English and Creative Writing Douglas Kearney will moderate. For questions about accessibility services, please email [email protected] or call 612-626-1528.

More information here: https://cla.umn.edu/english/news-events/events/evie-shockley-black-graphics-slavery-and-black-womens-bodies-work

If you would like to attend this event and count it towards a specific reflection, please email [email protected] before attending. Please include the session you plan to attend, what reflection you'd like to use it for, and a brief explanation for why you think the session fits with that reflection. 

Click here to register


Amplifying Equity Session: Complex Racial Identities: Navigating Intersectionality
Friday, March 29, 1:30-2:30pm | 204 Appleby Hall

Have you ever felt confused about your racial identity? Do you feel mislabeled and underrepresented? Join us in discussing race identity and intersectionality. This event will be facilitated by CCEL’s Equity Coordinator/Peer Advisor Dylan Rogers and Office Coordinator/Peer Advisor AJ Bicbic. Dylan is a Sophomore, and Neuroscience major with a Leadership minor. AJ is a Senior and Global Studies major with minors in Spanish Studies and Teaching English as a Second Language.

Click here to register


Art Party
Tuesday, April 2, 4:30-7:30pm | Rapson Hall Courtyard First Floor

 Design Student and Alumni Board and Simpson Housing Services are collaborating to host an Art Party at the University of Minnesota! Volunteers will create a piece of 5"x7" or 8"x10" artwork which SHS will sell at their upcoming Art 4 Shelter auction event. Each piece of art sold at the event provides a night of housing for someone in need. We'll have some materials, but if volunteers want to bring their own or donate materials they are encouraged to! The event is drop-in, so volunteers can come/leave whenever works for them, and snacks will be provided. 

If you would like to attend this event and count it towards a specific reflection, please email [email protected] before attending. Please include the session you plan to attend, what reflection you'd like to use it for, and a brief explanation for why you think the session fits with that reflection. 

Click here for more info and to register


Sustainability Symposium
Friday, April 12, 11:00am-4:30pm | Institute on the Environment UMN St. Paul Campus

The Sustainability Symposium will be held at the Institute on the Environment on the University of Minnesota, Saint Paul campus from on Friday, April 12, 2024. 

The Sustainability Symposium brings together diverse sustainability projects, artwork, research, and other ideas at one platform. This year’s Symposium will also celebrate and honor this year’s Student Impact Awardees. This year’s theme is Making Minnesota: Towards Equitable Urban Design. The theme centers Environmental Justice, the intersection of social justice and environmental issues, and for this event, particularly as topics relate to urban design.

If you would like to attend this event and count it towards a specific reflection, please email [email protected] before attending. Please include the session you plan to attend, what reflection you'd like to use it for, and a brief explanation for why you think the session fits with that reflection. 

Click here for more info and to register


Reflecting on the Dreams of the Chicago Freedom Movement and Their Pursuit for Fair Housing
Wednesday, April 17, 11:30-1:00pm | Online Event

What’s next for housing, since the 1960s call for “open housing” during the Chicago Freedom Movement once co-led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr? What has changed? And what has stayed the same? Through organizing and protest the Chicago Freedom Movement advocated for the right for Black home buyers to purchase anywhere they wish and was one of the major forces that led to the passage of the federal Fair Housing Act in 1968. This panel aims to reflect on what has changed since Martin Luther King Jr. and his fellow organizers piloted testing to prove discriminatory practices were persisting and perhaps what still needs to change.

If you would like to attend this event and count it towards a specific reflection, please email [email protected] before attending. Please include the session you plan to attend, what reflection you'd like to use it for, and a brief explanation for why you think the session fits with that reflection. 

Click here for more info and to register


CESP Processing Sessions and Community Meetings

This idea was developed by current Scholars and Peer Advisors working in the Center for Community-Engaged Learning in response to COVID-19, the uprising for racial equity, and recent political upheavals. CESP Processing Sessions and Community Meetings are different from CESP RAP Sessions in that they ask Scholars attending each session to bring their feelings, insights, and resources with them, as opposed to hearing from one or two Scholars about a topic of interest. Attending these sessions are meant to be more collaborative in nature. They will be largely unstructured, but will always be supported by a CESP staff member (either by a student staff member or full-time staff member).

We welcome you to sign up for sessions and meetings and also propose topics that you feel would be important for our community to discuss and take action on. These sessions can be counted towards the Collaboration & Community Building reflection and/or the Agency reflection (if you propose a topic and facilitate) for CESP. However, the goal here is not to offer something that will simply "meet a requirement", but to connect, process, build, and offer support to one another so that we can eventually take sustained action in and across our communities.

Lead a CESP Session

If you've already attended one CESP Session and are looking for more ways to build community with other Scholars, the next step is to lead a CESP Session! This is a great leadership and facilitation experience and it can fulfill the Agency reflection for CESP.

CESP staff are here to support you through planning and facilitation. Interested, but not sure what your topic will be? Please reach out to CCEL staff at [email protected]. Ready to start planning? Submit your ideas below!

CESP invites you to propose to lead a CESP Session during  Spring 2024.
CESP will support any and all who would like to facilitate an in-person, remote, or hybrid RAP Session or Processing Session this year. As a reminder, we recommend that you attend at least one RAP Session prior to facilitating, but it is not required. 

Submit a RAP Session Proposal