Swap

Program Contact

Roudy Hildreth

Roudy.Hildreth@Colorado.EDU

Swap is a student-run, grassroots initiative that builds bridges of support and solidarity between Swap volunteers, campus employees and international students in the Boulder community.

Swap brings together systematically divided campus sectors to share common learning and cultural experiences. Through Swap Lessons, CU students offers free and convenient English language classes to CU Boulder employees who hold under-appreciated yet indispensable positions throughout the campus. Through Swap Exchange, Swap provides conversation partners to CU Boulder’s International English Center (IEC) students, with the goal of helping provide our international friends with the tools to be productive and self-sufficient members of the Boulder community.

Using the Intercambio de Communidades standardized curriculum, Swap offers volunteers four hours of intensive ESL instructor training that includes specific grammar instruction as well as a cultural element. Swap Lessons students are then matched with a university employee from either housing and dining or custodial services or an IEC student. Students and service workers establish a mutually convenient bi-weekly meeting time for ESL classes. to work on the the vocabulary and English skills the university employee is most interested in learning.

In Swap Exchange, Swap volunteers do not teach English to their IEC partner, but rather act as a English conversation and friendship partner. Swap volunteers are matched with IEC partners and hang out a few times a month. This could mean going hiking, grabbing dinner or a movie, or going to the library.

To learn more about Swap Lessons and Swap Exchange, click here.

 

  • English Language Program

    Additional Info

    Student partners work with front-line staff weekly over the course of a semester to help them learn English and other goals named by the employee partner.


    Location

    on campus

    Dates

    Ongoing

    Public or Private

    Public Program (open to the public)

    Program Fee

    No charge to attend/participate in activity or program

Sponsoring Units

  • School of Education

  • CU Engage: Center for Community Based Learning and Research

Program Partners

  • Office of the Vice Chancellor for Administration
  • Intercambio
  • Housing and Dining Services
  • Facilities Management
  • Program for Writing and Rhetoric
  • CU Dialogues Program
  • Department of Human Resources
  • Department of Spanish
  • Volunteer Resource Center
  • English as a Second Language

Audiences Served

  • Adult Learners
  • Historically Excluded/Marginalized/Non-dominant Group(s)
  • Indigenous Populations
  • People Of Color
  • Socioeconomically Disadvantaged
  • Students - English Language Learners (ELL)/Emergent Bilingual