A group of children, chattering in Spanish, clutch colorfully decorated airplanes as they sprint across the Great Lawn. Their mothers dance alongside them, warmly applauding as the children jump off a nearby wall, into the arms of Brandeis students. The mothers, 18 new immigrants from Latin America, and their children came to Brandeis from a low-income housing development in Waltham to participate in a special workshop with Peruvian actress Ana Correa and to see a show during the "Acting Together on the World Stage: Setting the Scene for Peace" conference several weeks ago. While the mothers enjoyed the cultural show, students looked after their children.

In a thank-you letter to the CEL committee, Waltham Family School student Nelly Villegas wrote that a few days before the conference she felt like she was "inside a dark box" but could not think of a reason why. She said that the afternoon she spent at Brandeis made her understand how important she is, and that there were many good people around her who made her smile.

"It was a wonderful bringing together of the mothers and the children of the community with the Brandeis students and faculty. We all had learned something profound from one another," Prof. Mark Auslander (ANTH) said a week after the conference.

"I thought, 'This is why we're doing this work,' because this beautiful university is no longer an island unto itself, but it's a place where Brandeis people and our neighbors are working to create something entirely new."

Little by little over the last several years, professors and students in a myriad of departments have reached out to Waltham residents and citizens of nearby towns. Students in an environmental studies course conducted environmental testing in low-income Waltham housing developments; a sociology course looked at the impact Brandeis students have on the city's housing market; and an anthropology class partnered with the African-American community in West Medford, Mass. to document its history.

These individual efforts over the years culminated in the founding of the Community Engaged Learning initiative last year, which Auslander, the initiative's academic director, says integrates Brandeis' dedication to academic excellence and social justice with its obligation to be a part of the surrounding communities.

A committee of Waltham community leaders, made up of five students, 10 professors and eight staffers, put together a blueprint mission statement last May with the goals of bringing Waltham into the classroom, the Rose Art Museum and the Athletics Center, and integrating Brandeis students into the city.

This semester, roughly six courses contain a CEL component. Next semester about eight courses are expected to do so. Aside from academic programs, CEL is permeating extracurricular life on campus.

The women who attended the "Acting Together" conference have been invited back in two weeks to view exhibits in the Rose and participate in a bilingual caption-writing activity, Auslander said.

"The idea behind an academic course with a community-based project is that students study theories and concepts while they are having experiences in the complex, real world of community," wrote Thara Fuller, the coordinator for experiential education, in an e-mail to the Justice. "Their readings and discussions give a context for what they see and experience and help them to ask important questions about the underlying causes of issues."

During the symposium last spring, "Justice Begins at Home: Building Waltham-Brandeis Partnerships," the seeds for CEL were planted, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences Elaine Wong said.

The program brought together faculty, students and community partners from Waltham. "They got to meet each other to talk about needs, to talk about ways in which Brandeis has been involved in the past, so we actually had people talk about things they had been doing," she said.

Olga McClellan, chief diabetes nurse at the Joseph M. Smith Community Health Center, said last week in a phone interview that she suggested the idea of a walking group composed of students and diabetic Waltham residents. McClellan says the group grants an opportunity for interaction, exercising their English and Spanish skills as well as their bodies.

This idea evolved into the University-Community weekly walk that now happens every Friday at 8 a.m. McClellan said "students kept the energy going and ball rolling."

On an overcast Friday morning, Waltham resident Elaine Thomas briskly strolled around the track, explaining that she walks every day and even goes out before she comes to the track on Fridays. "What I like about the program is [that it] [gives] you motivation to come out here to take better care of your health," she said.

"People are obviously learning a lot in classes about these situations, and putting it into action completes the picture," McClellan said.

Auslander said that programs like these are helpful on many levels and relate to many different programs on which CEL students and faculty are working.

"New immigrants [in Waltham], who are primarily people of color from the Caribbean and from Central and South America, report feeling that their white neighbors do not see them as full citizens," Auslander said. Learning English is a way to increase the residents' visibility, he said.

This semester, students in the three sections of Spanish 105 are meeting with about 40 Spanish-speaking immigrants to talk and record their life stories, Prof. Olmanda Hernandez (SPAN) explained.

Lila Starbuck '08, a student in Spanish 105, wrote to her professor about how her meetings were going, "I'm looking forward to trying to build more rapport and develop a natural conversational dynamic instead of trying to extract some type of specific information about [my partner's] life story," she said.

Hernandez said the CEL project fits well into her curriculum, which covers themes of origins, displacements and pilgrimage.

At the end of the semester, students will write each of their partners' stories in Spanish and present them at a celebration at the religious education center of St. Mary's Church in Waltham, Hernandez said.

In addition to conversational practice, various students intern and volunteer at organizations that help Waltham immigrants learn English, including the Waltham Family School, a family literacy program that's part of Even Start, a federally funded literacy program.

Students in Prof. Ellen Schattschneider's (ANTH) Anthropology of Gender class as well as other students and professors reached out to the Prospect Hill Terrace, a public housing development in Waltham, last month to help clean up the complex. Students painted benches, cleared weeds and planted a garden. Another workday is scheduled for the beginning of next month, Schattschneider said.

"We've begun a process," Liz Adamova '08, a student in Schattschneider's class, said.

Prospect Hill residents and the CEL leadership are discussing turning an old daycare center in Prospect Hill into a new community center for residents.

While Olga Olmedo, a longtime Prospect Hill tenant, explained that a new center could hold language training and office skills courses, Auslander said Brandeis students could work there as well.

Hannah Chalew '09, currently the CEF for Auslander's "Making Culture" class, said that students are working with the Waltham Boys and Girls Club for 10 weeks on "Project Exposure" for teenage peer leaders at the club. She said the kids are able to expose their innermost thoughts and opinions through zines, murals and other forms of expression.

She said the class builds community partnerships that will grow in the future, and Auslander agrees, saying that professors and students will "keep on handing the torch from class to class."

"I think it would be wonderful that in the future, through building up the program, that a [CEL] component would be become a requirement for all Brandeis students through their tenure here at Brandeis," said Stephanie Sofer '08, who was a CEF for Prof. Laura Goldin's (AMST) class last spring.

CEL fits in well with Brandeis' ongoing focus on "experiential learning," which Associate Dean of Arts and Science Elaine Wong said includes creating, performing and exhibiting artwork, researching in science laboratories, participating in internships, teaching and performing fieldwork.

With CEL's formation however, experiential learning is becoming closely tied to the University's identity, participants said.

Grants for CEL projects are available on the University's experiential learning Web site and the CEL Wong said.

"Our vision [is] that Brandeis can be one of those safe spaces where people can work to . build a sense of their own abilities. The University should really be about universal access to knowledge, universal access to power, and CEL is a way to universalize our mission," Auslander said.