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In partnership with the  and the ,  has launched as a model of community engaged pedagogy.

Educators understand the profound value of experiential learning—taking educational research into real-world settings. The Centre for Community Engagement and Social Change (CCESC) at Queen’s University, launched in 2024, has already created opportunities that integrate hands-on experience with academic research.

Experiential learning—bringing academic inquiry into community settings has the power to co-create knowledge and spark systemic change1. Linking this learning to community-engaged pedagogy provides an opportunity to build capacity, addressing real-world issues through co-learning2 . Through  (

Experiential learning is reshaping how students connect the classroom to the real world—and leading this charge are Alex Jansen (Queen’s Department of Film and Media, founder of  and 

Walls to Bridges is a community-engaged learning program that began in 2011 as a partnership between Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario and the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. For the past three years, the program has also been connecting Queen’s students with currently incarcerated students in Kingston.

The 400-level activity-based course is available to students in philosophy and sociology at Queen’s, with classes held in both the minimum-security and medium-security units of Collins Bay Institution.

According to Times Higher Education’s 2024 Impact Rankings, Queen’s is first in the world for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger. The university’s success in this category can be attributed in part to a variety of initiatives intended to acknowledge and address student food insecurity.

Community-engaged learning opportunities often bring together students, faculty, staff, and community partners to address and respond to community-identified challenges. Wendy Craig’s first focus in her work as Special Advisor to the Principal on Community Engagement has been on these mutually beneficial learning experiences that effect positive change through collaboration among students and community organizations.