In a healthy partnership, each participant brings a distinctive contribution to the service, so that the two working together are able to do more than either could do alone; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The partnership that has formed between Gateway Community College and local air conditioning businesses in Phoenix, Arizona, serves as a good example.

In Phoenix, heat can cause health problems, especially for homebound elderly residents. Evaporative coolers do the job of cooling things down in most low-cost houses. However, when these coolers break, the fifty dollar repair bill is beyond the means of many low-income residents.

Enter: the partnership.

Gateway Community College offers HVAC (heating, ventilation, air-conditioning) certification among its associate degrees. Students training to get certification usually don t get experience working with evaporative cooling systems. They could get hands-on experience with these systems by providing repair services to residents whose air conditioning systems, and health, could be saved in the process. The college, however, has neither the material resources nor the transportation systems to provide these services. Local air conditioning businesses are inclined to develop strong relations with their customers, and help those in need. They have the materials and transportation needed to repair systems for paying customers. However, providing this service free of charge would be too time-consuming and costly, without the organizational services and support of the college students.

Six years ago, Professor Clyde Perry at Gateway put this set of needs and resources together: the need of elderly metro-Phoenix residents for functional air conditioners; the need of HVAC students at Gateway for hands-on experience working with evaporative cooling systems; and the resources of the college and the local businesses. Together, they formed the Evaporative Cooler Services Project, a day of service in March when air-conditioning technicians and students match up to provide services for residents throughout the area.

The project is now a staple in metro-Phoenix. Thirty-two HVAC students at Gateway participate in the specialized training that precedes the day of intense service. These 32 students are paired off with professional technicians. Using trucks and equipment donated by local businesses, each pair services up to four evaporative coolers in a single day, in homes of elderly residents who have requested the service.

Companies are able to build their customer relations through the program, and students receive essential practice in a skill they would not otherwise learn. Both have the opportunity to do so in an effort to better the community.

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

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

Website: http://www.cgc.maricopa.edu/pecos/community/service_learning/

Contact person: Michele Bush, michele.bush {at} gwmail.maricopa(.)edu

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

The project students undertake, and the logistical support required for the project are determined during the summer months by the Director of Internships and Volunteer Programs. Projects in recent years have included: fence painting and spreading sand (seven tons!) throughout the playground of a local pre-school; cleaning up the local Little League field; landscaping the grounds and interior painting of the Crippled Children s Society; and landscaping the grounds of a local public school.

The Director has attempted to select projects which: provide new students with an opportunity to see they can make a tangible difference; provide students with a common bonding experience; and serve as vehicles to let students know about other “”helping”" opportunities in which they might involve themselves during their time at the College. Most importantly, the project – an outreach effort – serves to establish relationships with the local community.

The New Student Community Service project was initiated six years ago when student government agreed to give up a portion of the orientation program dedicated to social programming. Students were initially reticent about relinquishing that time. However, after the first entering class successfully completed their project they challenged each succeeding class to do a bigger or better job and the project took on a life of its own.

Website: http://www.mdcc.edu/cci/focr.html

The centerpiece of “”Quest for Meaning”" and one of our seniors capstone projects is a 40-hour off-campus community service action project. To design their projects, students are told, “”Ask yourself what it is you love and how you might protect, enhance, and preserve it.”" This project yields significant student outcomes in the areas of personal growth, group process skills, leadership, and dedication to community development. At “”The Festival of Hope,”" an energetic outdoor celebration, students disseminate their project results and challenge Eckerd s faculty, students, administration, and staff “”to make a stronger commitment-in-action to the common good.”"

Website: http://www.eckerd.edu/catlas/commitments.html#gened

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

Website: www.empowermentconnection.org

One-day projects are often seen as feel-good experiences that do little to effect real change. One-day projects are criticized for providing a fusillade of service designed more to look good for pictures than to help the community. One-day projects are criticized as ignoring evaluation, disregarding learning, and running roughshod over community relationships.

A glimpse into the development of an action day a weekly one-day event out of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville provides a sound retort to the critics. The story shows how an idea built on relationships, learning, reciprocity, and continuity can lead to a high-quality, one-day project.

It starts with an idea. For instance, a student interested in women s issues wants to do a service project, but doesn t know where to go. The student suggests the idea to Suzanne Kutterer-Siburt, the director of the office of leadership development who organizes the campus s action days.

It is built on relationships. Suzanne has already established these relationships by regularly meeting with leaders of community organizations, taking the time to sit down and talk with them about what their organizations need and how students might be able to help. As a result, she knows that the Holy Angels Shelter, a shelter for homeless women in St. Louis, could use a day of student support, and she calls a contact there to suggest the idea. They discuss a possible service project and agree that it would be useful to the site.

It incorporates reflection. The relationship goes two ways students help the agency by providing services, and the agency helps the students by providing reflection. When the idea is suggested to her, a social worker at Holy Angels gets excited at the prospect of teaching about the issue. The social worker agrees that over lunch she will present an educational session to students, a practice that is common at the university s action day events.

Saturday comes and the action day goes off without a hitch. Sixty students gather on campus to go to the shelter, where they meet homeless residents and staff while providing much-needed fixing up. At lunch, they pause for reflection with the social worker.

And it continues beyond. Even after the day is over the connections with the community organization goes on. Suzanne remains in touch with the shelter, so that she can get their feedback on the project. Often community members will come onto campus later to speak to students in the leadership development program. In this instance, the social worker comes back to present a module on civic responsibility and citizenship.

Southern Illinois University s Action Days are built on strong relationships with the community. They turn to the community to identify needs and plan projects, build reflection into the project, and maintain the connection between campus and community beyond the duration of the project. While common criticisms of one-day events should be heeded, projects like the action days help prove the skeptics wrong.

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

Contact person: Suzanne Kutterer-Siburt, skutter {at} siue(.)edu

Kimmel Leadership Center web site: http://www.siue.edu/KIMMEL/

Launched in 1995 with initial funding from the Council of Independent Colleges, the Center for Service Learning is staffed by two full-time staff and the sixteen service scholars, students selected both for their high school service record and their four-year commitment to leadership at Millikin. Under the new Millikin Program of Student Learning, all incoming students and their faculty and student mentors participate in the Annual Day of Caring out in the community as part of orientation. Over 600 students spend the day at such places as the Children s Museum, the Zoo, the County Health Department, the United Way, the Decatur Memorial Hospital, the shelter for battered women and their children, and the Easter Seals pathways to independence facility. Some students continue their service commitment during the year by returning to the facility/agency they visited during First Week.

While many students develop their own personal service project as a result of their initial experience, all sections of the two University Seminars taught in the freshman and senior years incorporate a service project and related reflection components appropriate to the seminar s topic. Elementary school mentoring and literacy projects are especially popular. Many departments include service projects in courses required for their majors. Co-curricular activities such as the increasingly popular Alternative Break Program provide opportunities for sustained or intensive work in a community, whether in the Dominican Republic, areas of need in the United States, or local community organizations. Because of Millikin s century-long, mission-based commitment to experiential education and the integration of theory and practice, many service projects involve the application of discipline-based knowledge and skills. (Choir students and faculty, for example, have both sung and taught in schools and communities in Santo Domingo and the countryside.)

At their best, service-learning experiences at Millikin are beneficial for both the community and for the students. For many local community organizations, students augment service delivery, meet crucial human needs that might otherwise go unmet, and provide a basis for future citizen support. For students, community service affords an opportunity to enrich and apply classroom knowledge, explore one s vocational direction, develop civic and cultural literacy, improve citizenship, develop one s own style of learning, establish job links, and foster a concern for social problems, which leads to a sense of social responsibility.

Contact person: Michel Wakeland, Director, Center for Service Learning

Web site: http://www.millikin.edu/servicelearning/

DePaul University is a Catholic, urban institution, which was founded in 1898 to educate the children of Chicago’s large immigrant community, and has had service and citizenship as part of its core values throughout its history. DePaul has taken very seriously its responsibilities as a member of the larger community of Chicago. As it grew, the University included in its mission the education not only of first generation Americans, but also other non-traditional and underserved students and has as one of its goals being an internationally known provider of the highest quality professional education for adult, part-time students. In recent years the University has intensified its efforts at community service through a wide variety of programs that aim to provide solutions to the problems that face Chicago and many other large American cities.

DePaul and other schools are setting up such educational opportunities in an effort to move away from the parties, picnics, and goofy sports competitions that traditionally mark freshman orientation week.

Club representatives from this group encourage others to join the ranks by distributing rainbow ribbons and small cards, which attest to positive interaction among all. If a student decides to commit to this movement, the card is signed and carried in their wallet. Shortly following this dinner another gathering occurs in which these club representatives invite others to join them. Food is served and students gather in groups to discuss ways to promote unity and civilized behavior. These ideas are printed on 4″”x 6″” cards and worked on during the year by student groups and student senate.

n the first year of its inception the idea and the “”It Can Happen”" card was directed toward racism. In its second year the idea moved more toward unity among all, which is broader and involves all groups.

The origins of this concept evolved from a Student Senate member who felt that not enough concern was shown for others among students. We dubbed this movement as “”Carrie’s Love Campaign”". I mention this to illustrate the idea that it takes only one person to start something. The idea spurred others’ imaginations and evolved to an annual campaign. In light of the fact that our nation is facing so much violence in our schools, this movement is very timely. It has helped students to start the year right and to perhaps look at others with new perspectives.

Vincennes student government web site: http://www.vinu.edu/actgovt.htm

In the initial planning stages for this day, the schools were asked to engage in a needs assessment that involved school staff, parents, and students to determine a project which met a specific need in the community and, at the same time, engaged students as well as enhanced their learning. These projects were identified as a result of School-Site-Council discussions and joint sessions between Lesley College and Cambridge school representatives, including the student government organizations. The Lesley College Council for Community Service worked with members of the President’s Office to facilitate planning of ABC Day over the course of six months.

The specific project of the Agassiz School showcases Lesley College undergraduate students as active, community citizens. This particular Cambridge community project was concerned with homelessness. Over the course of a month, students throughout the school collected cans from neighborhood residents for a citywide food pantry. On April 10th, after the cans had been collected, this group of students also made lunches for the homeless in Harvard Square. Lesley College students who are members of the undergraduate service club walked with the Agassiz students into the Square, helping with the distribution of food, while sharing in a discussion with the students about the issue of homelessness in our communities.

As Lesley College celebrates its 90th anniversary, the ABC Day is a good example of a campus-wide initiative that clearly indicates the long-standing commitment of the college to the development of active, educated citizens among its students and to the cultivation of collaboration between the College and its surrounding communities.

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

Contact person: Sarah E. Gallop, MIT Office of Government and Community Relations, seg {at} mit(.)edu

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

Website: http://www.massart.edu/at_massart/ (“”Community Service-Learning”" is in the left sidebar)