Community engagement and impact

Every day in the Faculty of Education and Arts, our students and staff pursue the ACU mission and make an impact working both here and overseas.

We run a number of programs that connect our faculty with communities outside ACU and allow groups to engage in a meaningful way with education opportunities and reconnection through the arts.

Using our voice to raise other voices

Local engagement

Maths Challenge Club

Our pre-service teacher education students have the opportunity to provide students in local primary schools with mathematics activities which build a strong foundation for learning mathematics and challenges their thinking.

Read to Learn Program

This program targets primary school children, from years two to six and each student is matched with an ACU volunteer for a course of weekly one-on-one tutoring. Using specific diagnostic tools and literacy-based activities, tutors can provide individualised support. ACU students develop confidence working with young people and strategies to address individual student's support needs while developing their professional practice during their studies.

Explore the program

The Clancy Prize

The Clancy Prize is a annual religious art competition that invites students to create a work around a particular theme. ACU's McGlade Gallery at our Strathfield Campus hosts a curated exhibition of entries, giving students the opportunity to see their work hanging in a public art gallery.

Art from the Inside

Art from the Inside is an initiative that gives inmates at Queensland Correctional Centres a chance to engage with the outside world. Run annually at our Brisbane Campus in partnership with Prison Fellowship, Art from the Inside features artworks by inmates and gives their family, friends and the wider community the chance to witness their creativity.

Clemente Australia

The Clemente Australia program is so much more than the qualification it bestows on its graduates. While students who graduate from the course do receive a Certificate of Liberal Studies, the program has a much greater effect on these students lives: it gives them back a future. Before enrolling in the program, Clement students often experience multiple disadvantages. The certificate helps them reconnect with society, builds their confidence, and opens up pathways to further study and future employment.

The Big Idea Social Enterprise Competition

The Big Idea Competition challenges students to identify an area of disadvantage in the community and develop a business case for a social enterprise that can function either as a start-up or as a complement to an existing not-for-profit organisation. One of the key objectives of the competition is to encourage students to develop a deep and empathetic understanding of disadvantage.

Students have had opportunities to meet successful social entrepreneurs, thought leaders and industry professionals across a range of sectors, and to gain real world advice on how to effect positive change in diverse communities.

Overseas engagement

Working with teachers in the region

The National School of Education regularly sends teacher education staff and students to developing countries. There, they work with communities to raise the level of local student engagement and offer professional development to local teachers.

These community engagement tours give our students a global perspective that translates into a better understanding of difference within classrooms.

Teach and Learn in Vanuatu

Pre-service teachers (across Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary) are able to travel to Vanuatu as part of their professional community engagement. Students spend two weeks teaching and working at Arep School in the province of Torba; an area with low economic development and limited infrastructure.

Develop Curriculum in the Solomon Islands 

Our undergraduate education students have the opportunity to undertake professional experience and community engagement in the Solomon Islands. As a part of the program our student teach grades one to six in one of two partner schools in the Solomon Islands. Over 4 weeks of teaching, they are challenged to work with limited resources in a very different cultural environment. They learn to think creatively and develop engaging learning opportunities as they develop curriculum in teams with their peers.

Kiribati

Pre-service teacher education students teach in one of four high schools (St Patrick College, St Louis High School, Sacred Heart College, and Santa Maria College) located on South Tarawa. ACU Students work with local students and staff as a volunteer in close collaboration with ACU mentors and the Catholic Education Office of Wollongong Teachers. Helping Kiribati teachers with their English is one of the goals of the program.

Nepal

Our early childhood students, experience a new culture, learn new skills, develop and expand their flexibility and adaptability as an educator when taking part in the placement in Nepal. The placement runs in government and community schools in Kathmandu and the Kavre district. They work with local children and staff in the capacity of a leader of practice in close collaboration with staff and mentors.

South Africa

Our undergraduate education and arts students can participate in the THREE2SIX Refugee Children’s Education Project in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is an educational bridging program for refugee children who have been refused access to state schools. The project offers a curriculum with a strong focus on literacy and numeracy but also offers other life skills for primary age school children.

Immersion program

Our Bachelor of International Development Studies and Global Studies double degrees inform students about the developing world and the historical, political and cultural forces that influence developing nations. To provide students with first-hand experience of the organisations working in developing nations, these degrees includes a four-week immersion experience in a developing nation. Students work with communities and organisations making a difference.