Campus Compact » Program Models Community Service Centers – Locations

Center for Public Service and Community Engagement

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The Center for Public Service and Community Engagement was established to serve as a front door to Indiana State University. Our purpose is to enhance the quality of life in the Wabash Valley and State of Indiana by providing opportunities for nonprofit and for-profit organizations, governmental agencies, and citizens to access the services and programs of the University.

Website: www.indstate.edu

Contact:
Nancy Brattain Rogers
Center for Public Service and Community Engagement
Indiana State University
Terre Haute, IN 47809
812-237-2334

Collaborative efforts

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A variety of resources are available to support courses that utilize academic service-learning. UC Berkeley defines academic service-learning as the integration of community service activities into the academic curriculum. Support for service-learning is provided through the collaborative efforts of the Service-Learning Research and Development Center at the Graduate School of Education, the Cal Corps Public Service Center, and the Office of Educational Development. Faculty, graduate student instructors, and students are encouraged to access our resources.

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

Establishing an Office of Community Services Programs (CSP): developing community service-learning on campus

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We decided that the approach had to be systematic. First, a number of community service programs were consolidated into a single office. As a result, Cooperative Education, Human Corps, and internships were merged into the Office of Community Services Programs (CSP). Second, a new director was recruited to manage the CSP Office and charged to proceed with all deliberate speed. Third, to support her efforts, the University and the CSUB Foundation funded three half-time positions for the office.

The new director has lived up to our expectations. Almost immediately after her appointment she applied for and received a Campus Compact grant, and an outside grant that will provide a strong support base for the CSP activities over 5 years.

During the past year and a half, the CSP Director has put on three workshops that have trained thirty faculty on how to integrate community service learning into their classes. For the first workshop, Campus Compact monies allowed us to bring in an expert to the campus to advise the faculty on the myriad of possibilities in community service-learning. Since the first workshop, CSUB has relied on its own faculty to facilitate the workshops. Campus Compact and outside grant money also provided small internal grants to assist faculty in revising their courses. The CSP Office has provided the oversight and coordination for each of the faculty involved. This effort has significantly expanded our community service capabilities. Twenty courses have already been revised to include a community service learning option. Another 10-15 will soon follow. Participating faculty have come from many disciplines, including Psychology and Sociology, disciplines that one would expect to be interested, but also from Chemistry, Art, and Mathematics. We expect to bring 10 to 15 faculty into this process each year.

The CSP Office has also been busy developing potential placements in the area. The Director and the part-time staff have been at the center of this broad-based activity. The placements being secured fit into several categories. Some are paid cooperative education placements at nearby corporations; others are internships directly related to particular majors; finally there are placements that fall broadly under human service and community service-learning. While there is still much to be accomplished, the time is now in sight when enough placements will be available to support a university-wide requirement.

This two-year effort has heightened our community services capability across the institution and much progress has been made. However, much remains to be done. We are confident that community service-learning is here to stay at CSUB, thanks to the efforts of key faculty and staff who have pushed hard during the initial phase these past two years.

Website: http://www.csub.edu/CSP/

Haas Center for Public Service

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Stanford’s most visible commitment to community and public service is the Haas Center for Public Service. It offers students the opportunity to acquire service experience in local, regional, national and international contexts. The Center maintains and coordinates vounteer, internship, and community-research opportunities in the bay area for undergraduate and graduate students. Programs include assisting with service learning courses across the curiculum, implementing a student development program that gives every student the chance to build leadership skills and knowledge of the best practices of service, and collaborates with local communities to help meet immediate needs through direct service.

Haas Center for Public Service website

Service Learning Institute

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Since its founding as a program integrally connected to the planning faculty’s academic priorities, the university’s Service Learning Institute (SLI) has pursured a very specific purpose: providing students with the skills required for participating in culturally diverse communities by supporting the implementation of curriculum that combines subject matter acquisition with experiences of active citizenship. Service learning at CSUMB is a core teaching strategy which intentionally incorporates our university’s innovative vision: we believe that service learning is the most effective way for students to learn about difference, develop cultural sensitivity, and understand issues of equity within local communities.

CSUMB students are also required to take a service learning course offered in a major discipline before graduating. Faculty in each major have been challenged to design courses that meet major specific learning outcomes while involving students in projects and placements responsive to community needs. Though numerous courses each semester are taught in majors as service learning courses (over 40 each academic year), discipline based faculty, generally, have been unable to effectively incorporate themes of diversity and unity in their service learning teaching. They need additional skills and training if they are to access service learning’s potential for stimulating dialogue and attitudinal change in students.

Website: http://service.csumb.edu/

Dwight Hall

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At many colleges and universities, student service has a history of coming from outside the academy. In New Haven, Connecticut, Dwight Hall serves as an independent community service center for Yale University students. Located on campus but not technically accountable to the university, the service center epitomizes the high degree of student leadership that is necessary for successful co-curricular service-learning. The students who run the center are motivated by their responsibility to maintain longstanding relationships with New Haven agencies. Students develop proposals and include plans for how the program will continue after they graduate. Learning and reflection regularly take place through student publications and forums sponsored by the Center.

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

web site: www.yale.edu/dwight

e-mail: dwighthall {at} yale(.)edu

Center for Civic Education and Service

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The Center administers the “”ServScript”" program which documents students’ community service hours and activities on their academic transcripts. The Center also administers 40 Service Scholarships which are full tuition scholarships awarded each year to incoming first-year students with distinguished community service records. The Center coordinates a wide variety of volunteer and service learning opportunities and houses the Florida Campus Compact office.

Website: http://www.fsu.edu/~service/

Community centers collaborating and sharing resources

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The campus-based community service center at Loyola College in Maryland is designed around a single, strong community relationship. The Center for Values and Service channels the vast majority of its resources into developing programs in collaboration with Beans and Bread, a local meal program and homeless outreach center. The two centers share one staff member, and the college rents a floor of the center s building. Since the beginning of the partnership in 1992, Loyola has participated in and enhanced the center s programs, adding Sunday meals and kids meals, and developing after-school tutoring and women s groups.

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

Contact person: Ms. Andrea Goicochea – Beans & Bread/Frederick Ozanam House Partnership Liaison, mgoicochea {at} loyola(.)edu

Web: www.loyola.edu/about/jesuitidentity/centerforvaluesandservice

Defining values through actions

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Sometimes it takes one defining act to draw attention to the values of an entire institution. At Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the board of trustees decided to devote substantial resources and attention to refurbishing one of their community centers that had been in disrepair in a low-income neighborhood, hiring a full-time education coordinator and opening a new computer lab. Through this act, the board took a step towards establishing Washtenaw as an active and committed figure in a traditionally underserved community, and helped define the community values of the college itself.

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

Service Learning Center

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Michigan State’s Service Learning Center connects students with community agencies and provides support service to academic departments. The Center has three categories of placements:

Website: http://www.csp.msu.edu/slc/

Acting in the Community Together (ACT) Office

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Community service is an integral part of the Carleton culture, and service learning is a growing movement on campus. The college’s civic engagement initiatives are organized by the Acting in the Community Together (ACT) office.

During the winter 2000 term, Phil Camill, assistant professor of biology, taught a class entitled “”Biology of Global Change”". With help from the two ACT service-learning student coordinators and an environmental studies intern, students experienced community-based learning in which they developed civic competencies and civic habits. They were given multiple opportunities to do the work of citizenship through real projects of impact and relevance that were linked to their academic learning.

Website: http://www.carleton.edu/campus/ACT/

Excerpted from Diversity Digest, Summer 2001

Public Service Center

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Cornell’s Public Service Center was founded in 1991 to support public service initiatives that connect academic study with real world experiences. The Center engages students and faculty in service and social action, using service learning theory as the basis. Academic instruction is combined with community-based experiences to help students develop the ability to understand and solve problems in a more complex way.

Website: http://www.psc.cornell.edu/

Faculty culture: a breakfast discussion series

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Recognizing the salience appropriately assigned to faculty culture by the Civic Responsibility Assessment Tool, PSU has created the conditions for a vital exchange about how higher education can foster democracy and a sense of civic responsibility among students. Over three hundred faculty and community partners participated in a breakfast series that featured faculty, community partners, and other scholars from outside PSU. We met monthly to discuss and debate such topics as “”Values Formation in Higher Education,”" “”Martin Luther King, Jr s Teachings of Nonviolence and Service: Implications for Civic Engagement;”" “”Ethics, Leadership, and Service: Creation of a Just Society;”" and “”Scholarship of Community Outreach.”" In addition, several study circles were formed where faculty across a wide range of disciplines discussed theories of democracy and multiculturalism using the writings of Benjamin Barber, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Briand, and Thomas Ehrlich among others.

Many of the faculty development activities take place through Community-University Partnerships at the Center for Academic Excellence. The Center s location in the Office of Academic Affairs legitimizes and reinforces the academic value of these activities creating a vibrant culture of engagement.

Contact: askunst {at} pdx(.)edu

Swearer Center for Public Service

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Brown University’s Swearer Center for Public Service considers active community participation and social responsibility to be central concerns of the university’s liberal arts education. Activities include one-day service projects, youth education, mentoring projects, community health initiatives, and language and literacy projects. Students work with special needs populations including immigrants, low-income and minority communities, senior citizens, developmentally disabled, the deaf, and adults in need of basic education.

Website: http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Swearer_Center/