This fall semester program combines discipline-based analysis of civic leadership and social policy with an internship in which students work on meaningful projects linked to public policy and social change. The curriculum develops their knowledge of strategies and skills needed for civic leadership as well as the intellectual foundations of civic life and democracy. Students learn to critically analyze social and political issues associated with their internships and more generally about the ways academic knowledge can inform the design of desirable public policies.

Website: http://www.mills.edu/ICL/

During the academic year, Morris Brown students provided tutorial, mentoring and counseling services for the Harland Teen Center. Male students from Morris Brown provided tutoring and counseling for the male participants in Harland s after school program and also engaged the young men in conversations about academic success, career objectives and the importance of matriculating to college as a means of becoming self-sustaining adults. Women students from Morris Brown were involved in the Teen Center s Smart Girls project. The ultimate objective of this project is for girls to develop healthy attitudes and lifestyles. To accomplish this, the program addresses health and social issues that are specific to young women. Smart Girls is designed to prepare girls, ages 10-15, to make positive decisions at this critical stage in their physical, cognitive, emotional and social development. Both of these components of the Life Line project focus on the importance of developing strong mentoring relationships with young people at an early age to make a difference for them in their life decisions while they are pre-teen.

Although the Smart Girls project and the male mentoring component are important pieces of the Life Line initiative, other aspects have contributed to the overall success of the project. Specifically, the project has contributed to interdepartmental collegiality at Morris Brown and has instilled in Morris Brown students the value of teamwork. Our students have been provided an opportunity to hone and develop skills that are necessary for working with young people who have demonstrated a need for personal and intellectual nurturing. Finally, the project has made an extremely important contribution to Morris Brown College s effort to forge stronger community ties. The facilitators have gotten to know some of the community leaders associated with the teen center and they have developed a stronger mentor relationship with Morris Brown students.

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

Contact: Professor Christina McOmber at cmcomber {at} cornellcollege(.)edu or (319) 895-4137

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/

Dr. Fitch s second idea was to make the course more exciting and relevant to students lives. She would do this by giving students hands-on experience with science, getting them away from the numbers and chalkboards of the classroom and into communities where they could witness firsthand the useful application of otherwise remote mathematical and scientific theories.

The third goal Dr. Fitch had for her class was to maintain, and even enhance, the rigor with which students learned. Each analysis required at least sixty samples, and six hours of preparation in order to be studied properly. When students were uninterested by the course, they quickly tired of the repetitive work involved in chemical analysis. But when they were doing real work to solve real problems, when people s health and lives were riding on the calculations being done correctly, students would understand the need to engage in that level of rigorous study.

Today, the class is anything but notorious. Each semester, fifteen of Dr. Fitch s students sample and analyze the lead content of a city site. Students have tested local parks and pipes, and presented their findings to the City of Chicago. One student from Croatia brought what he learned back home and taught others to analyze the lead emissions of different gasolines.

In addition, students provide an after-school program for a group of sixty children, many of them girls and minorities who are typically not drawn to science. Students present what they have learned and teach the children to gather lead samples safely. Upon teaching children, students often realize just how much they have learned, and are forced through a different kind of rigor, this arising from the necessity of explaining concepts in terms and ideas simple enough to be understood by elementary school children.

By incorporating service-learning into her teaching, Dr. Fitch has brought both rigor and relevance to a course that was once considered little more than dull and difficult. In the process, from Dr. Fitch s experience, students now learn more, retain more, and are more excited not only about their studies, but about the meaningful application of those studies to solve real-life problems.

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

Bio and C.V. for Dr. Fitch: http://www.luc.edu/depts/chem/faculty/fitch/fitchgroup/Prblurb/prblurb.htm

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

Website: http://step.hampshire.edu/dil.html

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

Website: Under Co-Curricular Activities in the Service Learning section of http://www.massart.edu/at_massart/

The Weissman Center for Leadership supports and initiates educational activities across the curricular and co-curricular life of the College that advance women s ability and willingness to become effective agents of change for a better world. It concentrates its activities in three areas: advancing students understanding of important issues of public concern and the possibilities for positive change, promoting students ability to apply theory to concrete problems in the community, and enhancing students analytical skills and potential for citizenship through speaking, arguing, and writing.

The Speaking, Arguing, and Writing Program, under the auspices of the Weissman Center, provides support for the development of speaking and writing-intensive courses across the curriculum, ranging from history to biology to economics. In these courses, professors work to give students the critical thinking skills that they need to understand controversial issues, and to evaluate in depth their own views and the views of others. The courses foster the speaking and writing skills students need in order to express their views with control and assurance; they teach the critical evaluation of evidence and of inference, the search for missing premises and false dichotomies, and the anticipation of contrary views. By cultivating these critical intellectual skills, they foster a self-assurance and assertiveness that is founded on intellectual substance, and that will support leadership in civic discourse.

For more information on the Weissmann Center for Leadership contact Chris Benfey (cbenfey {at} mtholyoke(.)edu) and Karen Remmler (kremmler {at} mtholyoke(.)edu), Co-Directors. or see Weissmann Center web site.

For more information on the Speaking, Writing, and Arguing Program contact Tamara Burk, Director (tburk {at} mtholyoke(.)edu).

Contact: Program Director Dr. Gerise Herndon cgh@nebrwesleyan

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

“”As a political scientist, I have been involved in a project in conjunction with The League of Women Voters. The League in our area is trying to focus on reasons why local youth eligible to vote, do not. Secondly, the League is hoping to implement local strategies that would encourage voting. To this date, we have sponsored two round tables attempting to ascertain the reason for non voting. The first discussion pulled together political science professors from 4 regional institutions of higher education and history or civics teachers from 6 regional high schools. The 2nd discussion consisted of 20 students from those respective institutions of higher and secondary education. The opportunity for local academicians and students to discuss and share their insights on this matter held value in and of itself. Additionally, as an interest group, The League was able to use these discussions to develop strategies of implementation in order to encourage more voting among young people. Subsequent discussions are scheduled with these and other segments of the local populace.”"

Website: http://www.mhswelsh.com/wpg.html

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

Website: Religious Studies Department http://www.francis.edu/academic/Undergraduate/Religious_Studies/ReligionHome.shtml

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