For more information go to: http://civicengagement.allegheny.edu/newsletter.php

Contact: Amara Geffen, 814-332-3379, ageffen {at} allegheny(.)edu

http://webpub.allegheny.edu/employee/a/ageffen/MainPage2.html 

The center’s mission is to lead the University’s engagement efforts and service to the state of North Carolina and beyond by linking the expertise and energy of faculty, staff, and students to the needs of the people.

In all our work, the Carolina Center for Public Service seeks to build partnerships throughout the University and the state as we:

– Advance the quality and sustainability of efforts through effective practices
– Recognize and celebrate exemplary service
– Share information, strategies, and outcomes of UNC s service endeavors
– Facilitate community-based scholarship in addressing community issues

As the first public university, Carolina has a proud history of changing lives through educating scholars and leaders dedicated to forging a brighter future for our state, nation and the world. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is committed to expanding its tradition of engagement and responsiveness through the Carolina Center for Public Service.

The center provides a number of programs and services for students, faculty, staff, and the public, including: awards, service fellowships, trainings, and enrichment programs for students; grants and awards for student organizations; trainings, awards, and grants for faculty; an online searchable database of University engagement activities; a weekly listserv of service opportunities; an annual volunteer fair of community agencies; and an annual “”Bus Tour”" of the state for new faculty and administrators.

For more information, visit our webpage: www.unc.edu/cps/

Contact:
Lynn Blanchard, Director
Carolina Center for Public Service
(919)843-7568, ccps {at} unc(.)edu

Students experience the initiative through an Intercultural Certificate program which begins with Freshman Orientation, continues with an Intercultural Retreat weekend, and culminates in a year-long academic course combining fieldwork with conceptual training in building racially harmonious communities.

University Staff may participate in the initiative through an Intercultural Awareness workshop designed to gain an understanding of some of the culture-based issues students face, followed by an Intercultural Strategies Workshop designed to take action with respect to issues involving race or ethnicity on our campus.
]]> http://www.compact.org/program-models/program-models-campus-community-and-culture/an-across-the-campus-initiative-on-building-an-intercultural-community/1381/feed/ 0 http://www.compact.org/program-models/program-models-campus-community-and-culture/networking/1424/ http://www.compact.org/program-models/program-models-campus-community-and-culture/networking/1424/#comments Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 tdomf_26a6d http://compact.localhost.com/?p=1424 Faculty and students who want to network with others involved in service-learning can receive information about a variety of service-learning workshops, forums, conferences, and committees both on and off campus.

Website: http://gse.berkeley.edu/research/slc/

Contact: phone: (530) 898-6421 fax: (530) 898-6177 or e-mail at educ {at} csuchico(.)edu

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Operation Bridgeport was organized by Phyllis Macklett, the director of community service, at Sacred Heart University as a method of introducing faculty not only to service-learning, but also to the neighborhood. While Sacred Heart draws a considerable portion of its student body from the neighboring community of Bridgeport, few faculty members live in the area. As a result, faculty are largely unfamiliar with the neighborhood, which is in the most poverty-stricken district in the state. Through Operation Bridgeport, a small group of faculty spend a weekend in downtown Bridgeport at the St. Charles Urban Center to learn more about the lives of the people who live just outside the place where they teach.

The program begins with a guided bus tour, narrated by a Sacred Heart professor, that transports faculty from the richest parts of the city to the impoverished downtown area. After arriving downtown, faculty meet with the leaders of community organizations from the area, between doing service work in the neighborhood at Habitat for Humanity sites, food pantries, or youth centers.

Sunday morning brings a unique twist, when faculty members cook breakfast for Sacred Heart students who live in some of the most impoverished sections of Bridgeport. After the breakfast, students deliver a presentation to faculty on their experiences growing up and living in Bridgeport. According to Ms. Macklett, the presentations never fail to move faculty members, many of whom were previously unaware of the hardships faced by some of their students.

A faculty-administration brainstorming session that comes at the end of the weekend brings ideas from faculty excited about new possibilities. In the past, faculty have suggested new courses and new community activities for Sacred Heart. The outgrowth of one weekend was a free Grassroots Leadership Training Seminar Series for community leaders from Bridgeport. Faculty involved in the series gave seminars on grantwriting, communication skills, and group organizing.

Several faculty who attend the weekend have gone on to incorporate service-learning and community engagement into their classes. Dr. John DeGraffenried, one faculty member introduced to service-learning in the first Operation Bridgeport, now offers free after-school art classes as a community service in high schools in Bridgeport and neighboring towns. He ends each year with an art show. Bridgeport youth who once would have never come to Sacred Heart University s campus have their art on display there; Sacred Heart faculty who once would have never met these youth, see the work that the youth produced under the tutelage of a fellow faculty member.

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

For more information: http://www.sacredheart.edu/mission/service/lead-serv/OpBpt/

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Contact: Josh Young, director of the Center for Community Involvement, at jyoung {at} mdcc(.)edu
? Office Number: (305) 237-7477?
Fax Number: (305) 237-7580

The Volunteer Center has been in contact with more than 50 non-profit agencies in the area and has participated in many civic events. In addition to serving on many of the mayor s projects, volunteers and contributions have been provided to local cultural festivals, Make a Wish, and MASSPIRG.

Contact person: Cindy Flynn, Coordinator, Volunteer Center
Volunteer Center web site: http://www.fsc.edu/sacc/volunteer_center.html

Our strategic plan, The Plan for Mount Holyoke 2003, adopted in 1997, centers the College on our mission to foster the alliance of excellent liberal arts education with purposeful engagement in the world. It spawned a number of faculty-led initiatives including our now thriving Weissman Center for Leadership. The overarching goal of the Weissman Center is to enhance students abilities to become effective agents of change. In its first few years the Center has drawn significant faculty and student interest, major donor support (including a 4-million-dollar naming gift), and considerable public attention. Over 150 faculty and hundreds of students have participated directly in advancing the Center s work. Center programming falls into three main areas:

I. Focus on Critical Public Issues:
Through a variety of educational activities, the WCL seeks to increase awareness of the critical problems of our times and to engage the entire community on and off campus in discussion about workable solutions and avenues for action. Each semester the WCL organizes a campus-wide focus on a specific public issue or problem. The theme is incorporated into the curriculum in myriad ways and public events include lectures by distinguished specialists, panel discussions, student debates. Recent themes include:

• Fall 1999: Silent Killer? Environmental Contaminants and Health
• Spring 2000: U.S. Foreign Interventions: Human Rights versus National Interests
• Fall 2000: American Democracy in Crisis?: Money, Politics, and Civic Participation
• Spring 2001: Legacies of Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt

II. Active Learning Strategies

The WCL promotes active learning strategies that enhance students ability to think independently and analytically, to participate in informed and vigorous discussion, to grapple with uncertainty and complexity, and to work in groups across difference. These include:

The Community-Based Learning Program (CBL): an educational initiative located in the Weissman Center that links Mount Holyoke students with local communities in nearby Springfield, Holyoke, South Hadley, and the surrounding Pioneer Valley in courses that combine analysis with action. Begun in 1993 as a pilot project funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, community-based learning now has over 30 courses in a wide variety of disciplines.

The Case Method: a learning strategy that provides students with a narrative account of an actual problem and compels them to develop dynamic approaches toward solving it under the close questioning of faculty and peers, and with the constraints of new information. Supported by a $100,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation, the WCL is working during 1999-2001 with twenty faculty members from different disciplines to use the case method in their courses.

III. The Speaking, Arguing, and Writing Program (SAW):

A vibrant program that works with faculty and students to help students to think critically, speak articulately, and write effectively in order to develop students capacity to be active and effective agents of change. It includes the Writing Center and the innovative Speaking Center, which direct the efforts of scores of writing and speaking assistants and mentors. SAW conducts workshops for faculty and students, publishes Word of Mouth (newsletter for students), and coordinates other initiatives to foster a culture of conversation at Mount Holyoke.

Contact:Chris Benfey at cbenfey {at} mtholyoke(.)edu and Karen Remmler at kremmler {at} mtholyoke(.)edu, Co-Directors, Weissmann Center for Leadership

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Website: http://www.unity.edu/ServiceLearning/default.htm

CEAP is integrated with the curriculum. Faculty members re-designed existing labs and projects to connect with the CEAP program. For example: chemistry students examine the water quality of the Calvin ponds; physics students measure energy usage on campus; biology students examine the productivity of the ecosystems of the lawn and old field; and geography students study the consumption patterns of students.

CEAP creates a stronger academic community. The CEAP program was designed by a group of faculty members, representing each of the disciplines within the natural sciences at Calvin. Each year since its conception in 1997, participating faculty and newly interested faculty convene through Calvin’s faculty development program to discuss results and plan for the upcoming year. Professors from the social sciences and humanities have joined the program with their own projects.

CEAP opens up vistas for service and citizenship in a powerful way. The disciplinary content a student learns through a CEAP project is comparable to a traditional classroom, library or lab activity. The added value, however, is that the student begins to see the relevance of study and analysis for dealing with complex and pressing problems. Many students who would not consider themselves activists have the opportunity to learn more about environmental issues and what can be done to address them.

The structure of CEAP involves “”grass-roots”" energy and “”top-down”" support. There are multiple entry points for involvement in CEAP. Faculty members across the college along with students from the Environmental Stewardship Coalition are involved.

Contact person: Janel Curry (Department of Geology, Geography, and Environmental Studies) jcurry {at} calvin(.)edu

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Website: http://academics.alma.edu/servicelearning/index.php

Upon his appointment as president of Olivet College in 1993, Dr. Michael Bassis perceived a lack of shared purpose among faculty, staff, and students. There was, he felt, no common identity that held the campus together, no common goals that drove the curriculum. President Bassis initiated a process that led to fundamental change. The process is best seen in four key steps: a question posed to faculty; the ensuing period of discussion and generation of ideas; action taken to turn those ideas into reality; and the extension of discussion to the campus as a whole.

The question that started it all, posed directly to faculty, was this: Given the range of opportunities open to them, why should students choose to enroll at Olivet? The president emphasized the history of Olivet, which was founded as the first college in the nation to accept students regardless of race or gender, and asked faculty to explore the institution s values and their own.

The very act of discussing and forming new ideas brought faculty together and energized the process of institutional change. The answer that faculty proposed centered on the idea of social responsibility. Faculty authored a vision statement and titled it, Education for Individual and Social Responsibility. The new vision statement defined five sets of learning outcomes related to communication skills, reasoning skills, individual responsibility, social responsibility, and skills specific to students field of study. Now it was time to turn that shared vision into reality. A year of intense deliberation among faculty resulted in the Olivet Plan, a new academic program for the college. The Olivet Plan describes how the college will deliver education that leads to the desired learning outcomes. The plan eliminates fifteen majors and minors, and adds two new ones. It revises general education requirements to emphasize diversity, and requires freshman and senior year experience courses, each with a service-learning component. It also requires all students to complete a portfolio of their work addressing each student learner outcome.

With a new sense of purpose among faculty, President Bassis extended the scope of campus discussion to the rest of campus. This time, a new question was posed to faculty, staff, students, administrators, and trustees: What does it mean to be a responsible member of this college community? The discussion that followed resulted in the Olivet College Compact, a statement defining the values that govern the social culture of Olivet. By 1999, when the first class to attend Olivet under the new curriculum graduates, they will not have seen the lack of purpose that Dr. Bassis perceived when he first came to Olivet. Instead, they will have experienced their undergraduate years at a college redefined by its own community and guided by a commitment to social responsibility.

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

The Olivet College Plan is online at http://www.olivetcollege.edu/about/plan.htm

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Website: http://www.montclair.edu/pages/ccbl/index.htm

On many campuses, however, the greatest barrier is the one that goes almost entirely unspoken: the barrier between students and staff. Ironically, the staff who are critical to keeping the institution running day in and day out, are too often nameless faces to students who benefit from that institution.

At St. Thomas Aquinas College, the community service office initiated an effort this year to bridge that gap. St. Thomas Aquinas is located in a small town north of New York City. A large contingent of the workers at the school come from the town s large population of recent Haitian immigrants, many of whom are seeking education in English as a second language.

At the beginning of the school year, Sister Catherine Morgan, the community service director at St. Thomas Aquinas, first approached the director of the college s food service and cleaning staff. He agreed to grant workers paid time during work to study with a tutor. She then approached a professor in the college s education department, and asked if teacher education students would be able to tutor college staff towards the fulfillment of field work requirements. The professor not only agreed to the idea, but volunteered to coordinate student placements in the program.

Having already bridged gaps between the community service office, university food services, and the education department, the project went on to bring students and staff together. Eight students met with eight staff members once a week for brief tutoring sessions. Students in the program received training in ESL instruction, and were given the flexibility to design tutoring sessions to meet staff members needs.

For many students and staff, this was the first time that they interacted with one another. In some cases, a sense of community has formed crossing boundaries that once had gone unquestioned. One example comes from a teacher education student: upon hearing that the staff member she worked with had just lost his brother in a car accident, she helped to organize a fundraiser in the education department to raise money for the deceased brother s family.

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Website: http://students.syr.edu/depts/cpcs/nomination_form.html

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Website: http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/esc/general_info/organizations.html