CBL Funding Opportunities

In order to ensure that Portland State University is able to sustain its community-based learning and civic engagment efforts, the Center for Academic Excellence actively seeks funding from outside sources, primarily in the form of grants. These funds are used to sustain existing projects, to create new projects and partnerships and to encourage the development of community-based curricula and a civically-engaged faculty.

In addition to providing funding opportunities directly, the Center for Academic Excellence also strives to make PSU faculty, staff and students aware of the various funding opportunites available at both the national and regional levels. Please browse the links below for information on current grant opportunities:

Center for Academic Excellence Community-based Learning Grant Opportunities - a listing of grants offered through the Center for Academic Excellence at Portland State.

Regional and National Community-based Learning Grant Opportunities - a listing of grants offered by a variety of national and regional community-based learning and civic engagement organizations.

Current Community-based Learning Sponsored Projects:

• Oregon's Civic Solutions - Oregon Campus Compact, in partnership with Portland State University, launched the Oregon Civic Solutions: Statewide Partnerships for Public Service initiative in fall, 2003. 28 grants have been awarded to support projects that build civic skills among students while engaging in public problem-solving focused on three of the state's most pressing social concerns.
  

• Scholarship of Teaching Resource Team (STRT) - the STRT program supports and encourages faculty who are working to complete specific writing projects related to the scholarship of teaching and learning, broadly defined. Previous STRT projects have included papers for submission to professional journals or presentations at professional conferences and grant proposals for the external support of teaching and learning scholarship.

• Student Leaders for Service - Housed within the Center for Academic Excellence, the Student Leaders for Service program intentionally builds students' leadership capacity to serve and learn with not-for-profit organizations (including K-12 schools) in the Portland metropolitan area. Students commit to a nine-month term of five to ten hours per week and receive a variety of academic and community-based benefits from their work, including a small stipend.

• Maybelle Clark Macdonald Fund - The Maybelle Clark Macdonald fund is a private grantmaking foundation formed in 1970. It supports the good works of Oregonians with grants to community-based, preselected Oregon nonprofits with whom they have established relationships. PSU receives generous funding from the Fund in support of Student Leaders for Service and several other community-based initiatives.
  

• PGE Foundation - Community 101^SM, the signature program of the PGE Foundation, helps high school youth experience the value of community service learning and philanthropy. They learn that they can make a difference by being involved. The program includes student volunteerism and student grant making and is student-led.

• Bonner Foundation - Through sustained partnerships with colleges and congregations, the Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation seeks to improve the lives of individuals and communities by helping meet the basic needs of nutrition and educational opportunity.