About

Mission

Advancing Loyola’s Jesuit Catholic mission of “expanding knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith,” the Center for Experiential Learning is an undergraduate curriculum center that collaborates with community, staff, and faculty partners, as co-educators, to coordinate, develop support, and implement academic experiential learning for students.  

Vision

In support of the CEL mission, we seek the following:

1. To implement the mission of Loyola University Chicago by “expanding knowledge in the service of humanity” through experiential learning opportunities, engaging students, faculty, staff, and community partners;
2. To collaborate with community agencies to develop partnerships, to build capacity, and to respond to community-defined priorities through shared opportunities of experiential learning;
3. To empower Loyola students to avail themselves of, and critically reflect on, experiential learning through cultivating pre-professional skills, exploring career and life purpose, and fostering self-efficacy;
4. To support faculty in creating and actualizing experiential learning opportunities and to promote the scholarship of engagement across the university.

In order to support the ongoing development of Loyola University Chicago as an outstanding undergraduate institution for learning and to become a model of experiential learning among higher education institutions.

Programs

The Center for Experiential Learning serves students, faculty, staff, and community partners of Loyola as a resource for experiential learning opportunities and partnership in several key areas:

1. 1. Academic Internships
      Service-Learning
      Undergraduate Research
   2. Learning Portfolios

We offer information, resources, and support for the development of academic internship opportunities, service-learning courses and undergraduate research experiences, and work with Loyola’s community partners to develop community service-focused employment opportunities for those Loyola students eligible to receive Federal Work-Study funds. Such academic and professional experiences extend student learning beyond the walls of the classroom and shape the academic, civic, personal, social, ethical, and career development of students.

CEL Framework

As a curriculum development center at Loyola University Chicago, the Center for Experiential Learning anchors the mission and implementation of initiatives within community-based learning literature and high-impact learning practices (Kuh, 2008). The Center for Experiential Learning establishes criteria of practice rooted in the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP), the Council for the Advancement of Standards (CAS), as well as rooted in learning theory, such as Mezirow’s Theory of Transformative Learning (1997, 2001), Kolb’s (1984) model of experiential learning, and Integrated Course Design (Fink, 2013). Fostering both critical service-learning experiences and critical reflection (Dewey, 1908, 1910; Mitchell, 2008; Ash & Clayton, 2009) on those experiences across the curriculum remains a hallmark of Loyola University Chicago’s Center for Experiential Learning. Through interrogating issues with a social justice lens, the Center for Experiential Learning’s vision is to build an education that creates engaged, justice-oriented citizens through integrative learning for community impact.

Our goal is to build transformational undergraduate learning experiences at Loyola University Chicago in pursuit of the common good.