Building Knowledge and Understanding: The Community Learning Center at ASU

 

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When Elinor Hernández picked up her children from their elementary school, she didn’t expect to find a resource for furthering her own education. But when she saw a promotion for the new Community Learning Center (CLC) at the ASU Mercado in Downtown Phoenix, she recognized an opportunity to take advantage of the CLC’s online courses and improve her computer skills.

 

“Everyone I know is using a computer,” says Hernández, who is now enrolled in the CLC’s Basic Usage of Computer course. “I’m interested in learning more about computers – not just how to use them but also about the hardware that makes them work.”

 

Students like Hernández who attend the CLC find it is a welcoming environment where community members can learn life skills and continue their education. In addition to computer classes, the CLC offers a wide range of online courses, from health care lessons to personal finance management to math and grammar classes. Once students register with the CLC, they can take self-learning courses for free at the ASU Mercado or on their own computers.

 

“Our students learn at their own pace,” states Fabian Sánchez Ibarra, an ASU student who works as the CLC’s facilitator. Every Friday and Saturday, Sánchez Ibarra spends his afternoons tutoring and aiding the CLC’s students. He finds that offering online instruction enables students to fit their studies into their busy work schedules.

 

Thanks to a technology platform provided by Tecnológico de Monterrey, a partnering private university in Mexico, the CLC at ASU offers online courses in Spanish, making them very accessible to the Latino community. Several students use these courses to help them professionally, like one student Sánchez Ibarra mentions who is taking a course in Excel for her operating job at a manufacturing business.

 

Students can also pay a nominal fee and take tutored courses that include tests and homework. After successfully completing a paid course, students receive a certificate from ASU and Tecnológico de Monterrey that can help them in the job market.

 

Many CLC students apply the skills they learn in their home life. “Some of the most popular courses here are those that teach computer skills,” states Sánchez Ibarra. “Parents get really excited about these courses because they can help their kids in school or talk to their families by e-mail.”

 

“The Community Learning Center is a window to ASU for the community,” says Claudia Navarro, Associate Director of the Office of Pan American Initiatives and the interim coordinator of the CLC. Navarro believes that as students begin acquiring new skills and knowledge through the CLC, community members who never considered going to college will see the university as a viable option for their future.

 

She adds the CLC is working to add ASU courses in English and encourages faculty to collaborate with the CLC to translate their courses into an online format, helping to further expand the CLC’s course offerings.

 

But the CLC at ASU is more than just a resource for the community. Because the CLC is located on a college campus, the CLC offers many opportunities for ASU faculty and students to be meaningfully engaged with the community.

 

“The CLC gives ASU researchers a chance to get close to the reality of marginalized society by experiencing firsthand what their institution is doing to further social equality,” says Dr. Carlos Ovando, a professor in the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education who helped coordinate the opening of the CLC with the Office of Pan American Initiatives.

 

Ovando encourages ASU students to volunteer and perform internships at the CLC, noting the CLC can provide students and faculty with good opportunities for field work and service learning.

 

Navarro agrees, stating the CLC at ASU fulfills a dual purpose: as a lab where CLC students can further their education, and a learning environment where ASU researchers can discover how to teach different communities. Such understanding can help ASU create a CLC model that responds to the needs of Arizona communities, allowing additional Arizona CLCs to be built and reach more underserved populations.

 

“The CLC provides an opportunity to really bring in community members,” says Navarro. “We want our students to see the CLC as a resource for the entire community.”

 

The CLC at ASU was established in January 2006 through a partnership between ASU President Michael Crow and Rafael Rangel Sostmann, the president of Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Tecnológico de Monterrey). Although Tecnológico de Monterrey has been establishing CLCs in the United States and Mexico for years, this partnership marks the first time a CLC has been located on a university campus.

 

Learn more about the opportunities offered by the Community Learning Center at ASU by visiting its web site.

 

Michael Jung, ASU in the Community feature writer
Michael.Jung@asu.edu
(480) 965-0335