Tier I
SALT Enhanced Service Days

Tier II
SALT Enhanced Course

Tier III
SALT Internship, Mission Trip, Cooperative

Tier IV
SALT Capstone

The SALT Project is a comprehensive plan to integrate service-learning into the educational experience of traditional undergraduate students at Lipscomb University. A strategy for developmentally enhancing student learning, The SALT Project allows students to connect their academic experience and spiritual development with significant engagement in the community.

Students interested in going beyond the basic service-learning graduation requirement will be given the opportunity to attain the distinction of SALT Scholar. The SALT Scholar is a student who has become an expert in service-learning in the context of Lipscomb University, and whose investment in service-learning reflects a significant level of engagement. SALT Scholars will receive special distinction at graduation and on their academic transcript.

For more information on the SALT graduation requirement, see http://salt.lipscomb.edu/.

The graduation requirement will transition from an hour-based requirement to a course-based or program-based requirement in 2006-07. At the present time, 36 service-learning courses are offered on a regular basis. Three of these courses are sequenced and required of all students at the freshman, sophomore, and junior levels.

URL: www.fgcu.edu/connect/

Contact: Linda Summers Director, Center for Civic Engagement 239.590.7016 or lsummers {at} fgcu(.)edu

www.nccu.edu/Academics/

California State University, Monterey Bay was founded in 1995 to address two complementary sets of needs. The California School System, anticipating an influx of new students in the coming decades, needed a new university to educate them. The Monterey Bay community needed a new support system for the community, which was facing the massive loss of jobs after the closing of a nearby military base. The new university, founded on the old site of the military base, seeks to simultaneously meet the educational and community needs of Monterey Bay.

As expressed in its founding vision statement, the university is framed by substantive commitment to a multilingual, multicultural, intellectual community distinguished by partnerships with existing institutions, both public and private, and by cooperative agreements which enable students, faculty, and staff to cross institutional boundaries for innovative instruction, broadly defined scholarly creative activity, and coordinated community service.

The structure and format of the university flow from this mission. The curriculum focuses heavily on multilingual, multicultural education and technological instruction for both undergraduates and professionals. Service-learning and community engagement are thoroughly incorporated into study. Every service-learning course is developed with input from community members and team-taught by interdisciplinary groups of faculty members and representatives of community organizations.

All students are required to take a course on community participation, the stated purpose of which is to generate enthusiasm for service and prepare students for a lifetime of community participation. All students also take at least one service-learning course specific to their major.

Majors, too, are structured around the unique vision of the university. Traditional departments are replaced with interdisciplinary, theme-based specialty clusters that are formed around community issues rather than academic concepts. Thus, a student might major in Learning Systems or Earth Systems, Science, and Policy. Students complete their study by demonstrating their ability to participate in diverse communities, a demonstration that includes producing a description detailing the assets and needs of a local neighborhood. On an inter-institutional level, cooperative agreements enable students and faculty to work closely with other local institutions and community organizations, both public and private.

From its structure to its curriculum to its community collaborations, CSU, Monterey Bay is an institution formed around a driving mission. Taken together, this set of values provides a vision of higher education defined by community engagement.

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

Website: http://service.monterey.edu

Community Concepts is an upper-division course based in the College of Education (EDUC 157) and cross-listed in five other colleges (Applied Sciences and Arts, Engineering, Humanities and Arts, Science, and Social Science). It is intended to provide mutual benefit to both community partners and students. For community partners, it responds to problems and issues which they identify as important, strengthening community resources. For students, its main goal is to enrich students understanding of themselves as citizens in an evolving multicultural society. It enrolls approximately 150 students a year. The course structure includes the following key components:

• Fifty-two hours of supervised community service to a school or social organization that addresses the needs of an at-risk population.
• A core reader with articles selected to help students understand their own service roles, the social forces that shape equality and inequality, and strategies for social action.
• Large-group meetings to engage students in critical reflection through structured exercises with classmates at their own and other service sites
• Weekly on-site seminars facilitated by community site coordinators to help students link their readings and experiences and to resolve problems.
• Two papers plus weekly journal entries that require students to analyze their experiences in light of their readings and additional information gathered from individual library and internet research.

Through this course, our institution has created and sustained long-term partnerships with local schools and social service organizations, improved the condition of the community surrounding San Jose State University, and enabled students to encounter and learn from others different from themselves.

Contact person: Dr. Bob Gliner, Acting Faculty Director, Community Service Learning, rvgliner {at} email.sjsu(.)edu

After much thought and discussion, CSUB decided against the immediate imposition of this requirement. The reasons are, simply, that first, virtually all CSUB students are commuters and work 30+ hours a week. To add a community service requirement on top of their other academic and personal responsibilities seemed unrealistic. Second, even if the University wanted to require a community service experience, the campus lacked the staff and resources to provide such an opportunity. Finally, faculty needed additional training time and orientation to properly supervise the students in such placements. The faculty had not worked out how community service could best fit into the curriculum and be made meaningful for students. The CSUB Academic Senate’s advice was to proceed carefully. The President and deans have taken this advice to heart, although we are still determined to move forward.

Contact person: Krista Buckner, Director of Community Service Programs, kbuckner {at} csubak(.)edu

Graduation Required Service Hours (CSAC) Committed to teaching the ethic of service outreach, the University of Redlands requires all undergraduates to give to their community by taking a 3-unit service activity course. Each year over twenty thousand hours of service are performed at hundreds of agencies throughout the world. Placements occur annually at homeless shelters, pre-schools, police departments, safe-havens, and various other non-profit agencies whose mission the students wish to advance. The requirement is ripe for building community linkages on the reciprocal and invaluable relationships between town and gown as well as national and international service outreach.

Service Learning Courses - Student and faculty developed service learning courses are offered each Interim (January term) allowing students several options in which to actively participate in community problem solving and reflection. The following faculty taught service learning courses were offered Interim 1998.

1. Volunteer Income Tax Assistance. Skill = Tax preparation Outreach = Tax Assistance to elderly and lower income as well as Spanish speaking communities.

2. Into the Streets. Skill = General outreach and service to dozens of agencies throughout southern California.

3. Fieldwork in Adapted P.E. Skill = Teaching physically challenged children techniques in physical education. Outreach = Special education programs, local schools, and agencies working with physically challenged children.

4. Woodwind Instrument Repair. Skill = Repairing musical instruments at no cost to school districts. Outreach = Twelve local public elementary and high schools.

5. Ropes Course Leadership. Skills = Ropes challenge course/diversity training. Outreach = Local elementary schools and reform and county schools.

6. Service In Haiti. Skill = Working with impoverished children. Outreach = Participating in orphanage work and mentoring in Haiti.

7. Service in Japan. Skill = Teaching English. Outreach = Elementary students in various schools in Japan.

Contact person: Tony Mueller, Director of Community Service Learning, csl {at} uor(.)edu

Web: http://www.redlands.edu/student_life/csl/

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

Website: http://www.redlands.edu/academics/cas_academics/undergrad/csl/index.cfm?program=csl

SL 200 – Introduction to Service in Multicultural Communities (SL) prepares students to enter and exit communities sensitively and respectfully, participate in responsive service, and analyze community needs and assets in the social and institutional context of power and resources. This course directly prepares students to meet the ULR in Community Participation (CP) and provides students the opportunity to acquire skills, knowledge and abilities related to their effective completion of upper division service-learning courses and experiences. Students are introduced to the methods, guidelines, and principles of community-based learning as they integrate readings, discussions, simulations, and films, with direct community service experience.

The CSU Monterey Bay Service Learning Institute is online at http://service.csumb.edu/

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

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.

“”Discover Chicago”" web site: http://condor.depaul.edu/~firstyr/discover.html

Website: http://www.millikin.edu/academics/mpsl/IN150.html

-City Year Serve-a-Thon, where all first-years are required to participate in a service learning project .

-The Scholarship Program, where first-years with a demonstrated interest in community service are eligible for this program which awards $5,000 annually to students who wish to enhance their community awareness, leadership, and interpersonal skills.

-BankBoston/Bentley College Forum, an annual event which brings together business executives, community representatives, students, faculty and staff to explore the relationship between business and community.

-America Reads, where students are involved in literacy partnerships with local schools, libraries, and youth groups.

Website: http://ecampus.bentley.edu/dept/bslc/index.html

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

The first classes tested for radon in the air. Students analyzed the data they collected from the radon kits and discusses how different building materials contribute to the amount of radon in the air. Once the results were finished students went to the homes where the test kits had been placed to discuss the results with the household.

The second class, Project Planning and Management, used the money to buy recycling bins for the campus and institute a recycling program on-campus.

Contact:Peter Crowley Ryan, Ph.D at 406.675.4800 or peter_c._ryan {at} skc(.)edu

This information originally appeared in “”Science and Society: Redefining the Relationship”" by Stephen Miller. Published by Campus Compact, 1996.

At the heart of Project SO-PREPARED is the four-person learning team. Education majors, students from other majors at Rivier College, and students from Nashua High School and Bishop Guertin High School work with students from Dr. Crisp Elementary School and Presentation of Mary Academy in weekly after school meetings to develop skills, tutor, socialize, and engage in recreation activities. Through these activities, the program seeks to build character and create responsible citizens by working on such skills as collaboration, problem-solving, active listening, and mentoring through various projects in art, mathematics, and literature. The after school lessons are coordinated with monthly character education themes from the formal elementary level curriculum.

The after school program is supported by over thirty service-learning courses at Rivier College. Service learning is a graduation requirement for Rivier students, and most fulfill this curricular obligation by taking a “”plus one”" credit option attached to one of their regular classes. Under this arrangement, students earn an additional academic credit for a class by performing a service activity (such as Project SO-PREPARED) and doing additional readings, papers, journals, portfolios, etc. related to their service project. Faculty development of the “”plus one”" options was made possible by generous funding from the Lilly Endowment and the Council of Independent Colleges. Alternatively, students may enroll in SL 100 Learning and Serving in Community, an independent one credit service class specifically geared to Project SO-PREPARED, which is also open, free of charge, to the high school students participating in the program.

Administration and coordination of Project SO-PREPARED is under the able leadership of Professor Howard Muscott of the Education Department, in cooperation with Rivier’s Center for Peace and Social Justice. A formal planning and implementation team, composed of representatives from Rivier, the two high schools, and the two elementary schools, oversees the ongoing progress of SO-PREPARED.

Contact person: Darlene Nadeau, Coordinator for Service Learning
Service Learning home page: http://www.rivier.edu/academics/service-learn/

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

Website: http://www.defiance.edu/pages/service_learning.html

Contact: Director of SL Mark Minglin at mminglin {at} defiance(.)edu or 419.783.2374
http://www.defiance.edu/pages/service_learning.html

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

Website: http://www.cabrini.edu/Secondary/Academic/core_curriculum.asp