Office of Outreach & Engagement

Community Partner(s): Most E-Corps projects are with municipalities. To date, we have completed 107 community projects have involved 93 municipalities and 15 other entities, including Regional Councils of Government, Land Trusts, and municipal Development Corporations. We also partner with NGOs, particularly Sustainable CT.

Demographics: [not sure what you mean by this?] To date, students from 18 different majors have enrolled in E-Corps classes.

School or College: College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources

Campus Affiliation: UConn Extension County

Andover, Ansonia, Bloomfield, Bolton, Branford, Bridgeport, Bristol, Brookfield, Canton, Cheshire, Clinton, Colchester, Coventry, Cromwell, Danbury, Deep River, Enfield, Groton, Guilford, Hamden, Hartford, Hebron, Madison, Manchester, Mansfield, Middletown, Milford, New Britain, New Haven, New London, New Milford, North Haven, Norwalk, Norwich, Old Lyme, Old Saybrook, Plainfield, Stafford, Stonington, Stratford, Torrington, Vernon, Waterbury, Waterford, West Haven, Westbrook, Wethersfield, Windsor Locks

Program Description

The UConn Environment Corps (“E-Corps”) is an undergraduate STEM program centered on a model that combines classroom instruction, service learning, and Extension outreach. There are currently three E-Corps classes, each addressing the local impacts of, and responses to, a pressing environmental problem: climate resilience, brownfields redevelopment, and stormwater management. Students enroll in a classroom semester, during which many active learning techniques (group projects, guest lectures, role playing exercises, field trips) are employed to give them a “real world” feel for the issue at hand. The classroom semester is then followed by an optional practicum semester, during which students are formed into teams and paired with community partners to work on projects; the goal is for the project results to be useful and actionable for the community. To date, E-Corps has enrolled 264 classroom students and 122 practicum students, who have completed 107 community projects.
E-Corps has built an extensive collaborative team at UConn, involving 6 academic departments in 4 major schools/colleges, the 3 environmental majors (Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Environmental Sciences), 4 university-wide centers/institutes, and the Office of the Provost. The program is currently supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) initiative. The goals of the NSF project are to: improve and enhance the E-Corps pedagogical model; study the impact of the program on students, faculty, and the university as a whole; conduct meaningful and actionable projects that help Connecticut communities to address pressing environmental problems; make the program sustainable at UConn, and; assist colleagues at both UConn and at other institutions in adapting the E-Corps model.