Faculty in Chinese, French, Spanish, Swahili, and teaching English as a second language have created a wide spectrum of community-based engagement projects and courses. 

Shu-Chen Chen has been teaching classes with a community engagement component which she initiated since spring, 2019.  She has also started a new course in spring, 2022, i.e., CHIN4801: Professional Chinese with Community Engagement in which international community members join the class through zoom. The highlight of the class was when a HR specialist from a Taiwanese semi-conductor company ran a mock job interview for the students and gave them extremely useful feedback on the spot.

Janay Crabtree’s project on the Lingletes Linguistic Challenge is a  partnership between UVA students in LING 3400: Structure of English and Virginia high-school 11th and 12th grade students. The high school students learn about linguistics over an approximately eight-week period via Zoom with university students as a type of peer mentoring learning opportunity. High school students then come to UVA and compete in a linguistics challenge to solve linguistic problems similar to the ones they have worked on all semester. This program is a way to develop peer mentoring and use of knowledge for UVA students studying linguistics. The problem sets help us reflect on languages that we may not have come into contact with, while reflecting on the structures of English—a deeper way to understand varying languages for all interested in language. 

For several years Anne Rotich is leading Swahili language learners to interact with the local Swahili refugee community and work together in different initiatives. Students have translated materials to Kiswahili for the benefit of the community, and they have also engaged high school ESL Swahili students and participated in events together during the Africa Day event at UVA or during the Swahili film night organized by Swahili students.  

In 2019, Esther Poveda created a community-based language learning course-sequence: SPAN 3020 (Writing for Social Justice and Change) and SPAN 3030 (Sí se puede- Community Engagement in Spanish Speaking Charlottesville). This course-sequence promotes student learning about issues of social justice in the Charlottesville Latinx community by bringing together class discussion, conversations with guest speakers and community work. Students in these courses did community work as bilingual tutors and interpreters with Madison House Latinx and Migrant Aid, the UVA Latino Health Initiative, and the UVA Equity Center Multilingual Tutoring Program, a program that aimed to reduce academic inequalities faced by local emergent bilingual high school students in core academic subject areas. Additionally, the students that took these courses have developed podcasts for the community agents, and a wealth of bilingual educational resources for K-12 teachers, students, and parents which have been made available through the Support Cville Education Equity and the Virginia Dual Language Educators Network websites. Students that take the course in Spring 2023 will serve as bilingual tutors and mentors with the bran-new UVA Equity Center Starr Hill Pathways Program.