ABSTRACT
The Alabama City Year Program (ACYP), managed by the Master of Community Planning program at Auburn University in the United States, provides an integrated framework of community engagement, offering experiential learning to planning students and benefitting local communities while serving the program’s outreach mission. ACYP increases planning awareness in underserved communities, generates interest among students via active learning, and benefits student recruitment. The initiative provides an adaptable framework for small planning programs. This chapter discusses the opportunities and challenges of the evolving ACYP and describes a way forward for establishing a successful service-learning initiative that benefits all stakeholders.
