Mission and Department Priorities

Mission Statement

The Department of Community Service empowers Brandeis students to be lifelong engaged citizens and reflective thinkers through predominantly co-curricular community engaged leadership programs. The department’s initiatives aim to create reciprocal community partnerships that strive toward positive social change. Student learning will be focused on the following core competencies.

Reflective Thinking: Students will develop a reflective practice that enables them to think critically.
Engaged Citizenship: Students will develop a greater sense of social and ethical responsibility for the greater community at a local, national, and international level through active lifelong community engagement.
Self-Identity & Awareness: Students will explore their social identities with an informed value system and and welcome diverse perspectives and experiences to inform their position within a community.
Professional Skills: Students will develop skills and can identify how those skills are transferable to their professional endeavors.
Connection and Belonging: Students will develop a sense of belonging to members of the Brandeis and Waltham communities.

Brandeis Priorities

The following are a few of the high-level strategic priorities of the Brandeis Vision and how the Department of Community Service is working towards these goals:

Brandeis as a newly extroverted institution with regional, national and global connections and impact

Sharing institutional (student, faculty, and staff) accomplishments with the wider world in order to build strong external relationships and greater support.
Defining “social justice” for an institution of higher education, including engaging students on moral issues about how to live, what is just, and how to contribute personally and professionally to the world through one’s own actions and talents.

A redefinition of the student experience

Creating a unified community with a shared school spirit.
Placing students at the center of what we do, with a focus on residential communities (including their physical infrastructure), curriculum, pedagogies, academic advising, career placement, counseling, and mentoring about life skills.