Georgia Institute of Technology: SLS to Launch New Center
The vice president for Interdisciplinary Research and the Office of Undergraduate Education (OUE) have announced an institutionalization plan for Serve-Learn-Sustain (SLS) that will advance two of Georgia Tech’s strategic plan initiatives — Sustainability Next and Transformative Teaching and Learning — and strengthen service learning, community engagement, and sustainability ecosystems at Georgia Tech.
Established as Georgia Tech’s last Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), SLS launched in 2016 as a unit in OUE and concluded its official QEP work in 2021, earning the Institute a commendation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, writing that the program “inspired a closer dialogue among faculty regarding research and instructional practices, and thus serves as a model of how a QEP can transform an academic culture.”
On July 1, SLS will launch the Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education. The Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, which is serving as a hub for coordinating Georgia Tech’s Sustainability Next strategic plan initiative, will serve as the administrative home for the new center. CSCRE will collaborate with the sustainability cluster of the Interdisciplinary Research Institutes, including the Strategic Energy Institute and the Renewable Bioproducts Institute, to enhance Georgia Tech’s competitiveness in applying for grants that require meaningful community partnerships as a key component of their research and education plans. It will also continue to support sustainable communities education, in close collaboration with the Center for Teaching and Learning, OUE, and Education and Learning, to assure the continuity of SLS’s signature programs.
To continue advancing and scaling undergraduate service learning and community engagement as a high-impact practice, OUE will establish a new service learning team, as a priority that supports the Transformative Teaching and Learning strategic plan initiative. Institutionalizing the service-learning functions of SLS within OUE and aligning it with other high impact practices — such as undergraduate research, student innovation programs, first-year seminars, Co-op and internships, and learning communities — will position these programs to work collectively in support of the development of Georgia Tech’s next QEP, which will begin in 2025.