Community engagement in this faculty is largely situated in agreements between the faculty and 12 GDE partner schools.
The origin of this community engagement can be traced to educational service projects of the 1990s and earlier. Some of these were located in the RAU-INSET programme in Orange Farm, when there were 32 community schools in need of teacher training. Other projects included the maths education programme supported by the Caltex Foundation, and counselling service in Kathlehong and Eastrand townships.
CHESP (Community Higher Education Service Partnerships) supported a three year research project on what was slowly becoming formalised service learning, replacing the ad-hoc community projects.