When she helped start the Ferris School for Boys lacrosse team in 2017, Kalyn McDonough knew she was onto something good. Serving as the co-head coach at the secure care facility in Wilmington, Delaware, for court-committed males ages 13 to 18, McDonough took pride in coupling success on the field with the more important achievement of cultivating strong relationships with the young men and playing a positive role in their development.

Despite how rewarding the experience was, she did not realize how far it could take her until she enrolled in the University of Delaware’s Graduate Certificate in Community Engagement program. Introduced in 2020, the nine-credit certificate creates a scaffold by which scholars integrate their academic study in community engagement experiences through participation in coursework, community-focused graduate research or creative work, and hands-on practice.

“The certificate provided me the opportunity to turn my passion into a profession,” McDonough said. “I received training through coursework, professional development opportunities and mentorship, which have helped to enhance and expand my work by grounding my practice experiences in the larger literature, ensuring my research is informed by expertise in the practice community, and by learning the art of conducting community-engaged scholarship that cuts across my teaching, research and service.”

Faculty committed to community engagement

Directed by Nancy Getchell, professor of kinesiology and applied physiology, and Lynnette Overby, professor of theatre, the certificate was developed when UD’s Graduate Student Government senators expressed interest in having a community-engagement program like one that was being offered to undergraduates.

“We modeled it on the undergraduate course of study in that we have an advisory board, and the students do an e-portfolio, but then we focused it more on careers,” Overby said. “Thinking that many of them may be going into higher education and wanting to be engaged scholars, we cover what they need to know to be able to succeed in that environment.”

Getchell has utilized community-engaged teaching throughout her 21 years at UD and has found it to be a successful way to demonstrate concepts that also have an impact on the broader community. She began her involvement with community engagement when students in her Motor Development course developed a successful movement education program for an early learning center.

Overby learned a lot about community engagement at Michigan State University, where she was a professor and an associate dean for outreach and engagement. She incorporated service learning in her classes at Michigan State and started a grants program as associate dean. Working in the arts at UD since 2008, she coordinates interdisciplinary productions that connect to history and humanities. In addition to performing, participants, including community members, conduct workshops in schools and other locations.

All grad students invited

Open to any UD student pursuing a master’s or doctorate, the Graduate Certificate in Community Engagement program has welcomed students from varying programs of study, such as Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS), behavioral health and nutrition, and art. 

“Students from any background and any discipline can enroll in our program and learn more about community engagement,” Getchell said. “It’s designed for anybody in any major. Any student just needs to reflect on how they can make this work for their own major.”

Intro class provides roadmap

The program begins with Introduction to Engaged Scholarship, a class co-taught by Getchell and Overby.

“The class is really an introduction to all aspects of community-engaged scholarship,” Getchell said. “We start out by introducing the topic, then we look at the community-engagement partnerships with the University of Delaware. We talk with community partners to get a good idea of what they are looking for in a partnership with someone from UD wanting to do research with them.”

Introduction to Engaged Scholarship also addresses how to disseminate work to public and academic audiences, the Institutional Review Board process, promotion and tenure, and other topics to provide students with the core knowledge.

“The coursework was critical and was the foundation,” said McDonough, who described the class as a roadmap for the rest of the program. “You get introduced to a lot of seminal works in the field and to the frameworks and theories that have been utilized. For Dr. Overby and Dr. Getchell, it is an opportunity for them to work with the students on exploring how community-engaged approaches can be adopted in their discipline.

Chart your own course

The next two segments of the certificate program consist of other graduate-level coursework with a community-engaged component or community-engaged projects. At this point, the students have considerable freedom to take their pursuit of the certificate in a direction that closely aligns with their interests. Getchell said there is no set plan for what route the students need to take, and they are encouraged to explore many options.

McDonough, who was finishing her Ph.D. in urban affairs and public policy from UD’s Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration at the time, completed the second part of the certificate in an unfamiliar location far from home and the third component in a very familiar setting up the road.

As part of the winter 2020 Comparative Public Administration and Collaborative Research Experience team that traveled to Romania, McDonough worked with other graduate students at Babes-Bolyai University. Together they designed a study about educational access for incarcerated youths in Romania.

For the final portion of the certificate, she was able to incorporate the work she was already doing with the Ferris School lacrosse team by completing a preliminary evaluation of the program. She also designed a community-engaged course that she hopes to implement one day.

Incorporate experience into current studies

“Students have asked me about the certificate and how time-consuming it is,” McDonough said. “They are thinking that as graduate students they don’t have time for it, but I tell them it is an add-on that helps you do what you are already doing but in a more enhanced fashion with the guidance of community-engaged scholars. You get to choose your own path, and they give you the tools to map it out.”

While students who complete the three components receive the certificate, Overby said what is most important is acquiring the knowledge and being able to apply it in their work.

“We want them to be able to have a deeper understanding of what it means to work with, not on, not in, but with a community partner to be able to consider issues in a community that they could connect with their academic majors and, that together, problem-solving can occur and that it is mutually beneficial, not only to the community but to the student and to the future professionals as well,” said Overby.

Finding life’s work

McDonough, who also earned a bachelor’s degree in urban affairs and public policy at UD — where she was a standout lacrosse player — and a master’s in social work from the University of Pennsylvania, is headed to Australia at the end of the year on a Fulbright scholarship. She said the community-engaged training she received at UD was a critical piece in her being selected for the scholarship as her work displayed her ability to build relationships with community partners. When she returns, she will do postdoctoral work at Virginia Commonwealth University and then enter the job market. Thanks to the certificate program, she knows that she would like to continue to combine academic research with community engagement.

“I don’t have enough good things to say about the University of Delaware’s Graduate Certificate in Community Engagement program,” McDonough said. “If I can continue to do this for the rest of my life, I would be very happy.”