Campus Compact » Program Models Service By Issue – Multicultural

Campus Hispanic society enourages spanish-speaking residents to vote

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Every year, student members of Mecha, the campus Hispanic society at Phoenix Community College fan out across outlying neighborhoods to register voters. Students act as bilingual interpreters for Spanish-speaking residents. Students aim to provide potential voters with the necessary information and encouragement to get involved in the process, giving them information that helps make local issues relevant to their lives, and highlighting the importance of political voice as a way of protecting and promoting their rights.

From

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

An across-the-campus initiative on “”Building an Intercultural Community”"

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An across-the-campus initiative designed to promote “”interculturalism,”" which the university defines as: a process of learning and exchange across cultures in which no one culture dominates. Faculty participation in the initiative include: 1) Curriculum Development Workshops on how to change departmental curricula to reflect ethnic diversity; 2) Teaching Workshops to develop techniques for teaching in a diverse classroom; 3) Special Faculty Appointments and Minority Fellowship Awards; 4) Course Development Grants to strengthen the University s American Cultures program.

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.

Community Concepts course: developing civic competencies and civic habits

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The course uses the pedagogy of service-learning to address a general education requirement in “”Self, Society, and Equality in the U.S.”" which is intended to help students develop civic competencies and civic habits.

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

“”Eastside Project”": a community partnership focused on the poor and marginalized

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Santa Clara University’s Eastside Project invites its students, through community-based learning opportunities, to learn from the poor, the marginalized, and those struggling against deprivation or discrimination, so that the students knowledge bases will be tempered by new perspectives and insights.

Each quarter, Santa Clara s Eastside Project enrolls roughly 500 students who take courses that integrate academic analysis and reflective experience with underserved people in our local area. The Eastside Project has, for example, the following characteristics:

It is a faculty initiative, rooted in the curriculum. Students enroll in regular departmental offerings with a service-learning component from disciplines across the university, including anthropology, psychology, accounting, philosophy and religious studies.

The pedagogy is academic, exploring the on-going dialectic between theory and practice, which leads to a continuous reformulation of both. The process also elicits a variety of perspectives on problems and issues. Students put in eight hours a week engaged in the community; this experience informs classroom study including discussion, writing and presentations. Note that the “”project”" is grounded in the academic enterprise, not merely in community service or volunteerism.

It aims at establishing a mutually beneficial partnership between the university and the community. The effectiveness of the Project depends on having credible members of both the university and the community guiding its development and on-going activities. The learning is not a one way street. As equal partners, the community and the university listen and learn from each other — a partnership that ultimately anchors the concern for justice firmly within the university s curriculum and scholarly activity.

The specific aim of the Project is for students, animated by compassion, to move beyond philanthropy and social activism to the discipline of rigorous inquiry that can provide a solid intellectual foundation for the reshaping of the social order so that it serves the common good of all members of society. The rationale for this aim comes from the fact that the very institution (University) which explicitly commits itself to exploring, distilling, articulating and enhancing universal human experience is prevented from doing so because not all human experience can pass over into the consciousness of the university. Often neglected are the poor, the powerless, the voiceless in society. This is a problem for any university, but doubly so for a university that claims to stand in the Catholic Jesuit tradition.

In a book entitled Successful Service-Learning Programs: New Models of Excellence in Higher Education, Eugene Rice of AAHE described it this way:

“”In the moving story of the Eastside Project at Santa Clara University, we see how community service in the university s own neighborhood led to the cultivation of a global perspective, where all involved became increasingly aware of the rich diversity, the painful struggles of immigration, and the widening gap between the privileged and the poor. The editor, Edward Zlotkowski, went on to say, ‘what makes this program [Eastside Project] especially significant is the way in which it has been constructed to capture the very essence of its institution s guiding philosophy.’ Furthermore, what the Eastside Project refers to as a preferential option for the poor directly links its activities to a form of Catholic social activism that could, if similarly adopted elsewhere, redefine the meaning of Catholic higher education.”"

Contact person: Catherine Wolff, Director, Arrupe Center (formerly the Eastside Project), cwolff {at} scu(.)edu

Arrupe Center web site: http://www.scu.edu/arrupe/

Ethnic Conflict and Models of Multiethnic Cooperation

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This political participation grant funded “”Ethnic Conflict and Models of Multiethnic Cooperation”", a service learning class for Pitzer College students which encouraged participating students to conduct research on multicultural curriculum and ethnic conflict resolution programs. The course also provided students with a unique opportunity to help the Alhambra School District to assess the effectiveness of its policies for dealing with racial and ethnic conflict.

High school conflict resolution: Students Talk About Race (STAR) and an American Social Values course

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Students who enroll in a course on American Social Values at Glendale Community College take their learning from college and translate it into learning in local high schools. Students receive training as facilitators in conflict resolution as part of the course. Those who complete training are placed in area schools by a local program called Students Talk About Race (STAR), which formed in response to the Los Angeles riots of 1992. The college students facilitate dialogue among high school students on the subjects of race, ethnicity, and gangs.

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

Sophomore level core requirement service-learning course: “”Introduction to Service in Multicultural Communities”"

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

For at least three years, the Service Learning Institute will offer sections of SL 200 – Introduction to Service in Multicultural Communities, an introductory service learning course, in an effort to “”jump-start”" the development and implementation of this sophomore level core requirement.

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/

Aprender Mediante Amistad (Learning Through Friendship): helping families new to the United States

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

In Aprender Mediante Amistad (Learning Through Friendship), a program at Colorado College, students tutor and build friendships with families new to the United States. Two evenings a week, the group of college students meets with adult immigrants and their children to tutor them one-on-one in reading, math, and computer skills. Following the tutoring sessions, the group as a whole meets to play games in Spanish and English designed to build self-esteem and confidence. On Friday evenings, students meet with the families for a weekly movie night. Taken together, these activities serve to educate both the college students and their students about one another s culture.

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

Website: www2.coloradocollege.edu/Students/Pathfinder/Opportunities/OtherOrganizations.html

Cultural Anthropology course: Witnessing culture

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The syllabus for Robert Franco s introductory course in Cultural Anthropology explains a set of outcomes that students are expected to achieve: for instance, understanding how anthropologists approach cultural analysis; observing differences and similarities between and within cultures, and developing a concept of culture that is applicable to local populations. Every one of these outcomes, the syllabus then explains, is best achieved through service-learning. Taking a truly anthropological perspective on service-learning, the syllabus goes on to say that you [the student] and I [the professor] are equal partners in this, emphasizing that service-learning is best done through mutual understanding. Students provide at least twenty hours of service in the community in any number of sites that put them into contact with people of the different cultures of Hawaii. Students maintain a journal, reviewed by the professor every two weeks, which they complete by writing an annotated social science essay on their experience.

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

Contact: Dr. Robert Franco at bfranco {at} hawaii(.)edu

Council on Hispanic Education’s (CHE) literacy programs

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Council on Hispanic Education (CHE) at Boise State University dedicates its efforts to reducing the high dropout rate among high school students in Idaho s Hispanic community. CHE runs two literacy programs for Boise residents. One teaches family literacy, with students providing literacy education to parents and their children together. The other, the Young Chicano/Chicana Writers Project teaches writing skills through a focus on meaningful content. Middle and high school students write essays and poetry that celebrate their culture and its traditions and language.

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

Celebration of global cultures: World Fest

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Every year, Wheaton College holds World Fest, an international awareness celebration featuring the music, food, and artistry of cultures from around the world. Last year the college sponsored Balinese Mask Theatre, Irish-Gaelic Singers and a West African Drumming Group among other performers. The event was open to Wheaton students, faculty, and staff, as well as to members of the outlying community and to high schools from across the area.

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

Center for Community Economic Development

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

In diverse cities, community development is best achieved when partners representing that diversity are able to work together. In Boston, the University of Massachusetts Center for Community Economic Development provides support to a broad network of multi-ethnic, multi-racial, community-based organizations reflecting the diversity of populations in the area. These groups meet to jointly address issues of economic development with the help of three university task forces that outline the Center s work in the areas of business development, employment and training, and neighborhood revitalization.

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

Web site: http://www.umass.edu/larp/CED/

Contact: John Mullin, Center Direct, jmullin {at} larp.umass(.)edu

“”Navajo of the Southwest”" course: students use art in ways that enrich the community and increase understanding

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Throughout the year, students are provided with opportunities to utilize their talents in ways that enrich the community as well as increase their understanding of what the community has to offer. Imagination, creativity, and vision in the civic arena are all nurtured through a variety of programs integrated into the curriculum through service learning, as well as through co-curricular programs. Faculty members interest in service learning has increased greatly over the past few years, and participation in communityARTworks during Orientation stimulates that interest both for faculty and students. Service learning has been utilized in a range of disciplines.

This past semester, a course, called “”Navajo of the Southwest,”" was jointly developed by a professor of Anthropology and the Associate Dean of Students. Students studied the art and culture of the Navajo, as well as the history and the current social, political and economic issues. As a part of the curriculum, the class traveled to New Mexico for an Alternative Spring Break, working with Navajo children on the reservation to create a collaborative mural. Before leaving for New Mexico, students also learned about issues of diversity and culture while engaged in service, basic group process theory, and tools for successful collaboration. Over seventy students applied for the fifteen spaces available in this class, which was an overwhelming success. Through relationships developed with Navajo while in New Mexico, students became aware of the issues surrounding uranium mining on the reservation, and continue to be activists in working to gain compensation for Navajo who contracted cancer as a result of their work in the mines.

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

Moving the Forum Francophone des Affairs

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

In small college towns, there is often one tangible accomplishment that serves as a turning point in town/gown relations. In Lewiston, Maine, that moment came when two Bates College students, at the behest of the community, helped convince an international nonprofit to relocate its American headquarters there. The move by the French organization Forum Francophone des Affaires drew attention to the commitment of the college to the town, which has a large Franco-American population. That accomplishment has helped to transform and strengthen the relationship between Lewiston and Bates.

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

Website: The Forum Francophone des Affaires is online at http://www.ffausa.net/index.html

Partnership with the Twin Cities metropolitan area

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Metropolitan State University, founded in 1971 to provide alternative educational opportunities for working adults, has evolved into a comprehensive urban university serving 9,000 residents of the Twin Cities metropolitan area. In 1992, the university acquired its first campus and its first “”neighborhood”" when it occupied the facilities of an abandoned hospital in the Dayton s Bluff community on the East Side of St. Paul. In the years since, the university has worked closely with neighborhood organizations and agencies to build multi-dimensional partnerships based on mutual interests and shared values. These university-community partnerships involve faculty, staff, and students from every college and administrative unit, and encompass programs in such diverse areas as affordable housing and community economic development, neighborhood based crime prevention and dispute resolution, health care, urban education, community arts, and social services. Taken as a whole, these partnerships have been designed with three overarching goals in mind:

2) provide community based learning opportunities for students;

3) develop the capacity of the university to serve as an institutional resource in partnership with the community.

Created an extensive partnership with Dayton s Bluff Elementary School that combines services-learning and curriculum enrichment programs (e.g. the America Reads program, Family Literacy, Peer Mediation, Philosophy for Children, Environmental Education, and College for Kids an on-campus college awareness program) with social service, parent education, and affordable housing initiates focused on involving low income parents in addressing issues of concern to themselves and their families.

Co-organized a comprehensive planning process to identify priority development projects for the community with an emphasis on creating more affordable housing and neighborhood businesses, and enhancing the physical and natural environment of the neighborhood.

Conducted ongoing community based research projects, both individually and in cooperation with other area colleges and universities, including a major study of the neighborhood economy; a community capacity inventory featuring interviews with over 100 community residents on contributions they have or could make to the neighborhood; an inventory of “”problem properties”" and a “”tool box”" of strategies residents can use to convert these properties into neighborhood assets; and a multi-year study on issues and opportunities for members of newly emerging Asian-American, Latino, America Indian, and African American communities in Dayton s Bluff and St. Paul s East Side more generally.

Established a campus based community health clinic operated by the university s school of nursing to provide both on site and outreach health services and practicum placement opportunities for nursing students.

Created both practicums and community service field placements in the Dayton s Bluff community for students in the social work, community violence prevention, law enforcement and criminal justice, teacher preparation and accounting programs.

Adopted an institutional “”shared use”" approach that includes the creation of a joint community-university library, and the establishment of a community job resource center on university property. Having received approval (and initial funding) from the state legislature, the library will be one of the country s first joint university-community libraries. The job resource center is operated by a community non-profit, with support from the university s career placement director and student interns. It focuses on supporting public assistance recipients in the transition from welfare to work.

Contact person: Susan Giguere, Director, Center for Community-Based Learning (CCBL)

CCBL web site: http://www.metrostate.edu/ccbl/CCBLindex.htm

Performance and Social Change and Community-based theater

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

A version of Performance and Social Change and Community-based theater is taught to a class of 15 graduate and undergraduate students who spend 20-30 hours working with (somewhat vaguely defined) community-based theater groups. These include a program using theater to teach literacy in elementary schools, a theater company for highschool kids on the north side of Minneapolis, a few interactive theater companies, and a Latina women’s group celebrating La Posada.

A lot of time is spent in the classroom asking questions about cultural colonization, social agency, and the responsibility of the artist/community to engage in mutual exchange. Also questioned is the notion of ‘community’ as a positive, homogenous entity, examining the boundaries of ‘community,’ their fluidity/stability, and various ways of addressing the inclusion/exclusion paradigm that often defines community.

The class is a combination of history/theory and practice, looking at the pageantry movement of the early 20th century, Little Theaters, grassroots theaters, separatist political movements identified with theater (such as the Black Arts Movement, El Teatro Campesino), Cornerstone Theater, and contemporary grassroots movements. Boal techniques, guests from Yugoslavia using the work of Grotowski and Barba, and some sociodrama are introduced to the classroom.

Website: http://www1.umn.edu/commpub/c_cla/cla_69.html

“”African American Literature”" course: collecting stories from local seniors

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

During the spring and fall of 1997, 24 students enrolled in two separate African American Literature courses at Raritan Valley Community College visited with senior citizens from the local community and interviewed them about their family histories, which date back to the mid-1700 s. Photographs of the senior citizens who participated in the program were taken by a photography professor at the college. The collected oral histories were published and put into a traveling exhibit that was shared with other community organizations. The histories also became part of a permanent collection at the Metlar-Bodine Historic House, a local historical museum.

School website: http://www.raritanval.edu/

Originally from ServiceService Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy. Updated 2001.

African American Literature students mentor Middle Earth youth

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Through a collaborative effort with Middle Earth in Somerville, seven RVCC students from African American Literature mentored seven African American youth from this community organization in 2000-2001. To ensure the continuation of the mentoring program, the students are creating a Web site demonstrating how a campus/community partnership can nurture future leaders. The College mentors acted as role models by offering Middle Earth youth friendship and guidance and sharing academic/cultural experiences, thus enriching the younger students lives and creating aspirations for future participation in higher education and its goals. Some of the joint activities involved attending campus classroom lectures, swimming at the RVCC pool, attending shows at the RVCC Planetarium and a community theater, as well as socializing through visits at Middle Earth and email.

Contact: English Department at 526-1200 ext: 8816

PAR Project: Racism

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Racism in the employment arena continues to have devastating effects on racial and ethnic minorities in the US. To be excluded from opportunities for meaningful employment and advancement is to be denied access to the fundamental pathways to esteem and credibility in our society. This PAR project began to challenge instances of discriminations in our local community.

Working with representatives from the employment sector, concered citizens from the community and the university initiated an effort to document the extent and nature of employment discrimination in our county, and to analyze its historical and contextual influences. The results of this research will be used in the development of educational materials intended for all sectors of the local community towards a sustainable change in employment practices. Furthermore, the structure of this communtiy-university liaison will be institutionalized as a regular part of a university course offering on racism in American society.

Contact: Jennifer Greene at 607.255.2506

Partnership with the Forest Grove School District: meeting the needs of ESL students

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

A strong example of an initiative at Pacific University that both teaches citizenship skills to students and enables the University to be a citizen in the community is our multi-faceted partnership with the Forest Grove School District. This school district has a very high percentage of students on free and reduced-cost lunch program and a rapidly increasing population of Spanish-speaking students. Limited funding from the State challenges the district to meet student needs and as a result it depends heavily on assistance from the community.

Students from Pacific tutor English as a Second Language students, read to primary grade students through the state-wide SMART (Start Making A Reader Today) program, tutor children in math, and lead after school recreation programs. Pacific students have initiated several after school programs at the nearby upper elementary school. These include French Club, Japanese Club (taught by students from the English Language Institute), and Peace Club (which leads students in activities and discussion on community building and non-violent conflict resolution). The Big Buddy Program pairs Pacific men with young boys for mentoring and needed extra attention.

EACH (Environmental Awareness Cultural Hacienda) gives ESL students a grounding in environmental understanding as preparation for Outdoor School. This project was begun by a Hispanic high school student who later enrolled at Pacific University. The class will be institutionalized as one of the projects in next year’s Pacific AmeriCorps program that will place thirteen Pacific students in part-time positions in the schools. Other students in this program will be doing their student teaching in the district’s high impact schools. This work meets a critical need in the community, but also provides students with opportunities to learn life-long citizenship skills. Through service learning classes in Sociology, Anthropology, First Year Seminar, World Languages, Psychology, Peace and Conflict Studies, Education, and reflection sessions through the Humanitarian Center, students process these experiences and make connections to their lives as citizens. They learn to value cultures other than their own, understand the challenges of adequately supporting schools, appreciate the importance of providing assistance to a troubled child, and feel the gratification that a program they initiated and ran is having a meaningful impact in the community.

Contact person: Ellen Hastay (hastaye {at} pacificu(.)edu), Director of the Humanitarian Center and Service Learning Coordinator

Humanitarian Center web site: http://nellie.pacificu.edu/humctr/index.html