Applications Open! Enroll for Summer 2027 at 2026 Tuition Pricing Until Sept 30
Design and lead a community impact project in this 3-week civic engagement program for high school students at UCLA.
Course Description
Passion can start a movement, but lasting change requires a strategy. Students examine how nonprofits, philanthropy, government, businesses, and community organizations approach complex social challenges. Human-centered design, systems thinking, and theory of change provide practical frameworks for moving from a broad concern to an action that can be tested and improved.
Case studies and collaborative design challenges ask students to identify stakeholders, examine power dynamics, listen to community perspectives, and define the problem before proposing a solution. They practice creative problem solving, purposeful leadership, impact measurement, and narrative change. Each activity emphasizes evidence and collaboration rather than assuming that one idea or organization can solve a system alone.
The work builds toward a student-led community impact day. Teams develop the purpose, audience, partners, activities, responsibilities, and measures that will guide the project. Students also craft a personal leadership narrative that explains the values and experiences they want to bring to future community work.
This three-week high school program takes place at UCLA in Los Angeles, California. The program is developed by UCLA and offered in partnership with Summer Discovery. It is available to residential and commuter students. Beyond class, students connect focused academic work with campus life, growing independence, and clearer direction about what they may want to study or pursue next.
What Will You Do?
• Compare how nonprofits, philanthropy, government, business, and communities create change
• Use stakeholder analysis to examine interests, influence, and power dynamics
• Apply human-centered design and systems thinking to a social challenge
• Build a theory of change linking actions with intended results
• Define practical measures for evaluating community impact
• Plan and lead a student-directed community impact day
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
• Analyze a social challenge across stakeholders, systems, and power relationships
• Apply human-centered design and theory of change to an impact strategy
• Plan and evaluate a collaborative community action project
Students will leave with a community impact plan and personal leadership narrative, stronger tools for leading change, and greater clarity about further study or pathways in public service, social impact, or community leadership.
Why Civic Engagement and Social Impact Skills Matter
Civic engagement requires people to understand a community before deciding how to help. Stakeholder analysis shows who experiences a problem, who holds influence, and whose perspective may be missing. Systems thinking reveals how policies, resources, incentives, and relationships can reinforce one another.
A theory of change then connects a proposed action to the result it is meant to produce. Students learn to test assumptions, define evidence of progress, and revise a plan when it does not match community needs. Those habits support ethical leadership, collaboration, project planning, and more responsible decision-making in any effort to create change.
Who Should Attend?
This course is for high school students who have completed 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade and want to understand how ideas become organized community action. It is a strong fit for students interested in civic engagement, public service, nonprofit work, philanthropy, government, social entrepreneurship, or purposeful leadership.
Students should be ready to examine complex issues without searching for a quick answer, listen to different stakeholder perspectives, collaborate on a public-facing project, and take responsibility for part of a community impact day. Previous leadership experience is not required. A completed program application is required.
Why UCLA?
UCLA gives high-school students the opportunity to explore an academic interest while experiencing university life in Los Angeles, a city where entertainment, technology, business, science, and culture constantly intersect. The campus has its own community and rhythm while connecting students to a wider environment built around creativity and new ideas.
Students learn alongside peers, navigate a large campus, and gain independence through everyday choices and responsibilities. Time outside class expands the experience through friendships, campus life, and opportunities to notice which subjects and settings hold their attention. For families, UCLA offers a valuable combination of substantive academics, personal growth, and clearer direction about what a student may want to study, experience more deeply, or pursue next.
Civic Engagement and Social Impact in Action
Civic engagement and social impact work appear in community organizations, nonprofits, philanthropy, government, public policy, advocacy, corporate responsibility, education, and social enterprise. People in these settings research needs, build coalitions, design programs, secure resources, communicate with stakeholders, and measure whether an effort is producing meaningful results.
Students try that progression through case studies, stakeholder mapping, theory of change, project design, and a community impact day. The experience can help them identify whether they are most interested in policy, organizing, nonprofit leadership, social entrepreneurship, research, communications, or direct community partnership.
After successfully finishing this course, you will be awarded a certification completion for your accomplishment.
*This is a preview, not what you will receive