Student Life

“Having a public life is as fundamental to our humanness, to our well-being, as having a private life; without the two halves, life cannot be whole.”

--Parker Palmer

“A socially cohesive and economically vibrant US democracy…require[s] informed, engaged, open-minded, and socially responsible people committed to the common good and practiced in ‘doing’ democracy…. Civic learning needs to be an integral component of every level of education, from grade school through graduate school, across all fields of study.”

--Excerpt from A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future

Welcome to the Civic and Community Engagement Center (CCEC). To be civically engaged means combining awareness, education and action for active citizenship and democratic participation. It means becoming aware of civic and political issues and concerns. It means learning to think critically, creatively, and in concert with others, about solving problems – small and large – and becoming architects and agents of positive change in our local communities and the wider world. It means working for the common good, not focusing exclusively on private concerns. It means coming to understand and act upon the knowledge that we live in an interconnected world of interdependent communities. If our local communities are to thrive, if our nation and the global community are to flourish, we must reclaim our identity as citizens. We must work to reimagine and revive the public sphere. Those who are civically engaged contribute to society, their communities, in ways large and small, through thoughtful acts of service, advocacy, meaning-making and problem-solving.

Civic and community engagement at Ramapo College of New Jersey takes many forms and spans several programs and activities throughout the College. We invite you to explore the site and visit the programs operated by the Civic and Community Engagement Center.

While the Civic and Community Engagement Center houses many programs, it is not the sole source for civic engagement at Ramapo. Many faculty enrich their courses with dynamic service and engagement opportunities for their students. Several student clubs and Greek life organizations have service, engagement and/or philanthropy at the heart of their missions.

Please also visit links to our community partners and to some of these other programs within the College.

First-Year Student Challenge

The First-Year Student Challenge is a new initiative sponsored by the Center for Student Involvement and Residence Life to deepen a sense of community among first-year students by residential floor through campus and civic engagement. Each floor creates or selects a service project where they not only volunteer with a community partner organization throughout the year, but also tackle and think about the underlying social issues that require the need for volunteers in the first place. Additionally, the First-Year Student Challenge also rewards floor points to first-year students who attend designated "FYSC Events." Therefore, a combination of civic participation, and Ramapo community involvement will decide the winning floor of the challenge. Clubs and organizations have the opportunity to register their events to be FYSC Events if they have a clear connection to civic engagement or first-year student engagement. The challenge runs through March of each year. A panel of judges announces the winning floor(s) in April.