Civic Engagement for Social Good
Inspiring community collaboration and meaningful change
Introduction
The world needs people committed to understanding social issues and collaborating alongside their communities to create meaningful change. In Civic Engagement for Social Good (CESG), previously known as CIVICUS, students work with organizations addressing a range of societal challenges, including poverty, food and housing insecurity, child welfare, education, political activism, animal rights, and the environment. In CESG, students explore:
- Issues impacting local communities;
- Organizations addressing pressing social issues;
- Ways to engage in hands-on work in civic engagement;
- Strategies for deliberative dialogue; and
- Methods to leverage their academic and career interests to make sustainable change.
CESG coursework and community engagement activities operate in tandem. Coursework helps students to understand the root causes of issues and strategies for addressing social concerns, while service projects, civic engagement work, and co-curricular activities create opportunities for students to complete hands-on work with communities while earning course credits.
As an interdisciplinary program, Civic Engagement for Social Good encourages students to ground their work in their passions, academic majors, and professional interests. Our students represent all thirteen colleges, with majors ranging from engineering and biology to business and education.
Through their shared passion for creating social good and engagement in co-curricular activities, CESG students form a close cohort who develop strong friendships and support each other throughout their time at UMD.
Colloquium and Lecture Topics
- The complexities and structures that cause social issues
- Theories and practices of civic engagement
- Models for working toward positive social change
- Ways to engage in difficult conversations with empathy
[This program] has made me a kinder, more compassionate, more informed person. [It] gave me the opportunity to get my hands dirty, to engage in the community in ways I never thought I could. [It] has taught me that it takes a village but also that I can make tremendous change myself..providing me with more opportunities for learning and character-building than I would've gotten in any other program or club.
Other Learning Opportunities
Students are actively engaged in UMD, College Park, and the broader Washington D.C. community. Annually, cohorts of CESG students have completed over 1,500 hours of volunteer work. Students can choose from over 100 projects per year with a wide array of partner organizations.
Students:
- Participate in civic engagement projects. For example, students have acted as mentors for local elementary students, planted trees to increase the canopy in Washington, D.C., provided support to patients in medical facilities, served meals from a mobile soup kitchen, handled dogs at rescue adoption events, canvassed on behalf of political candidates, and captioned videos to ensure accessibility for a wider community.
- Take trips to Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area to participate in scavenger hunts, visit memorials, monuments, and museums, dine in historic restaurants, and attend baseball games, cultural heritage events, and the performing arts.
- Meet guest speakers, including politicians, staff members from local non-profit organizations, and community leaders and activists.
- Travel out of town to places like New York and Philadelphia to learn about civic engagement work in other cities.
- Participate in community-building activities, such as challenge courses, trivia, game nights, and study breaks.
Second-year students participate in a capstone experience for academic credit consisting of either an internship, extensive service work, research, or affiliated experiential learning courses. Students have held internships in places like local and national politics, non-profits, high-profile media outlets, medical facilities, research labs, mentoring organizations, and peer dialogue training. Examples of past internships include: Capitol Hill, the Center for Early Childhood, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Maryland General Assembly, the National Institutes of Health, Pregnancy Aid Center, UMD Athletics, A Wider Circle, the White House, and many more. The capstone gives students authentic experiences and skills that help support their academic work, career goals, and future community engagement efforts.
Curriculum Overview
Over the two-year program (four semesters), students complete the 13 credit hours required for their CESG Scholars citation and many fulfill General Education requirements. The following table represents a typical two-year curriculum. Details about courses and requirements can be found on the CESG Citation Checklist.
| SEMESTER | COURSE | CREDITS |
|---|---|---|
| Semester 1 | CPCV 100: Colloquium I | 1 credit |
| CPCV 225: Intro to Civic Engagement for Social Good | 3 credits | |
| Semester 2 | CPCV 101: Colloquium II | 1 credit |
| Semester 3 | CHSE 228C: Intergroup Dialogue (DVCC) | 1 credit |
| CPCV 200: Colloquium III | 1 credit | |
| Semester 4 | CPCV 230: Internship; or CPCV 240: Service-Learning; or CPCV 250: Research; or |
3 credits 3 credits 3 credits |
| Semester 1, 2, 3, or 4 | Supporting Course (var. Gen Ed) | 3 credits |
Sponsoring College
Office Address
1103 Centerville Hall
Office Email
Faculty
Civic Engagement for Social Good News
Students Share Service Projects at CESG Showcase
Nearly 60 freshmen presented posters outlining service projects and discussed their experience with a crowd of faculty, staff, peers and supporters on April 24 at the Civic Engagement for Social Good (CESG) First-Year Student Service Showcase. Held in the Edward St. John Learning and Teaching Center, the event featured lively discussions and the opportunity to collaborate on future work.
Historic Gift Fuels Record-Breaking Giving Day for College Park Scholars
COLLEGE PARK, MD. — On March 4, 2026, the University of Maryland united its entire community—faculty, staff, parents, friends, alumni, and students—for its annual campus-wide Giving Day, the largest single day of giving in support of the university’s mission.For College Park Scholars, the day became one for the record books: nearly $182,000 raised from over 100 donors, the most successful fundraising effort in the program’s history. Powering that milestone was a transformational $50,000 matching gift and endowment from alumni Melissa and Hart Rossman—a contribution that doubled every dollar donated and permanently established a new program fund to support future generations of Scholars.
2025 Citation Class Honored at Awards Ceremony
College Park Scholars celebrated the best and the brightest of its most recent Citation class at its annual Citation and Awards ceremony recently. The 2025 Citation class, already packed with leaders in their academic fields of study and on campus, emerged undaunted by the challenges as one of the last high school classes during the pandemic, as productive community members in Scholars and at the University of Maryland.
Three Scholars Named ODK Top Ten Freshmen
Omicron Delta Kappa (ODK) is a nationally recognized leadership honor society. The Sigma Circle of Omicron Delta Kappa Leadership Society annually recognizes the Top Ten Freshmen of the University of Maryland.
Strengthening Communities, a Course at a Time
Civic Engagement Across the Curriculum at UMD (CEAC at UMD), a pilot professional development program, supported 12 instructors, including several College Park Scholars program directors and staff, from seven schools and colleges as they integrated community-focused strategies and experiences into more than 20 courses serving over 1,000 students, in disciplines as varied as art, kinesiology and sociology, during the fall and spring semesters. College Park Scholars in the CEAC at UMD 2024-25 Cohort:
Five College Park Scholars Earn Philip Merrill Presidential Distinction
Eighteen outstanding graduating seniors at the University of Maryland are committed to a variety of causes and career goals, ranging from statistics and public policy to teaching.