Community Engagement Associate (CEA) Program

Indiana University, Indianapolis

Emma Folkerts, BSW

Experience at the IU Student Outreach Clinic

About the IUSOC

A free clinic that provides various primary-based services, such as medical, dental, social, legal, and more, for the uninsured and under-served in the Indianapolis community. Led by the IU School of Medicine and hosted by Neighborhood Fellowship Church, both students and their supervisors of attending physicians and residents aim to close the healthcare gap within the community by coordinating a medical presence to address a wide variety of biopsychosocial needs of Neighbors who come into the clinic.

Address:

3125 E 10th St., Suite D

Indianapolis, IN 46201

Hours:

Wednesdays 5-8 pm

Sundays 9:30 am-2 pm

(Closed for Holidays)

Contact Us:

(317) 225-1881

Website:

https://soc.iupui.edu/

My Day-to-Day as a CEA

My position is a hybrid, so I work remotely and in-person, aiding Mrs. Howes, SW interns, SW student volunteers, and the SW board member with whatever is needed to help our Neighbors get the most from the SW department. When working remotely, I create handouts that Neighbors may need (see below for a few examples). I also work on finding a plethora of different community resources that Neighbors may need. For instance, I have created an ongoing 63-page document of resources for our Neighbors, mainly focusing on the west side, as our department lacked those resources.

As for in-person, I go in on Saturdays twice a month to aid the SW department with whatever may be asked. This can consist of a vast range of different tasks from meeting 1-on-1 with patients to see what psychosocial needs they have, organizing our supply closets, or even creating flyers that are not only English but also Spanish and Hatian Creole friendly.

Handouts Created for the IUSOC's Neighbors to Utilize

What I Have Learned

After being in this position for a year and a half, there are numerous lessons I have learned!

Community resources are so vital!!
- Social workers rely on community resources to help our clients in areas our organizations lack. Healthcare is a luxury that many are unable to afford due to a lack of insurance, financial or physical barriers, or past trauma from bad experiences within the healthcare setting. Free clinics, like the IU SOC, allow clients to get the healthcare they need without the barriers that non-free healthcare institutions have. Community resources also aid us within the IU SOC. Since the IU SOC is a free student and faculty-run clinic, there are not many things the SW department can provide besides showing Neighbors what resources are already in their community that can help them. These resources can extend to finding a shelter for the night, getting low-income friendly groceries, finding SUD treatment, or accessing clothes for a new mother's child.
It is SO important for organizations to offer services in languages other than English.
- With the IU SOC, we will get many different Neighbors who have their primary language as anything but English. The main languages we see are English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole. Although we have Spanish interpreters depending on which students in the clinic can speak the language, we are limited in communicating with those who speak another language that is not English. One of the tasks I mentioned previously that I have done and can be seen in my examples above is translating our handouts into other languages. It is the American ideology that everyone who is in America knows English, even if they were not born in the United States. However, that could not be farther from the truth. Despite English becoming a well-known language around the world, many may not be able to communicate in English or are more comfortable using their primary language.
Collaborating and working with others is the best approach!
- At the IU SOC and in many professional positions, working with others is common. It allows for the professionals to aid the customer/clientele/Neighbor in the most effective ways possible, rather than solely relying on one individual. To be more specific, the IU SOC's interdisciplinary team works together to help meet Neighbors' needs, including physical, mental, and social needs. This is just the same as a restaurant manager who can not run the entire restaurant on their own. It takes a team to bring their ideas together and provide the best, most effective service to the population they are serving.

Overview of the Community Engagement Associate (CEA) Program

The Community Engagement Associate (CEA) program has a long history at IU Indianapolis, starting with the Service Learning Assistant (SLA) Scholarship Program. Historically, community-engaged faculty and staff received funding to provide scholarships to students to support work in service learning courses, community-engaged programs, or community-based research projects that advanced the community-engagement mission of IU Indianapolis. In 2021, the SLA program shifted to a student employment program in which students and community engagement associates (CEAs) were hired to work part-time hours to support faculty and staff in their community-engaged endeavors.

The CEA Program is part of the IU Institute for Engaged Learning (IEL), Hine Hall, 243.

The Institute for Engaged Learning: Supporting students, faculty, and staff

The Institute for Engaged Learning promotes and supports the equitable progression of undergraduates through pathways of connected and scaffolded curricular and co-curricular, applied, integrative, and experiential learning opportunities that prepare students for lives of commitment and success with skills to communicate, innovate, and engage in local and global communities to address 21st century problems.

The institute is comprised of units and centers that work together to support faculty, staff, and students in these efforts, including:

First-Year Experience Programs
Center for Service and Learning
Center for Research and Learning
ePortfolio/Portfolio Initiative and The Portfolio Studio
The Record of Experiential and Applied Learning

The institute seeks partnerships with other units offering engaged learning experiences in the campus-wide effort to ensure that all undergraduate students participate in at least four scaffolded, high-impact, engaged learning experiences by the time they graduate.