Campus Compact » Program Models Service-Learning And/Or Service In Residence Halls

Residence Hall Service Advocates Program

tdomf_26a6d — Fri, 05 Sep 2003 00:00:00 +0000

UC Berkeley’s Cal Corps Public Service Center coordinates the campus’ Service Advocates Program. Service Advocates live in the campus residence halls and serve as resources for residents on involvement in campus community service and service-learning programs. The Service Advocates also develop a year-long service plan for their residential community that builds on the interests of the residents, and in the case of themed housing, incorporates aspects of that theme. The Service Advocates participate in a weekly leadership skill development seminar.

Website: http://calcorps.berkeley.edu

Internet writing center

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

The Service-Learning Program at CU-Boulder is both well established and growing. We offer an exciting array of courses that present students with diverse service-learning opportunities. Currently, over 35 faculty and 1000 students participate in service-learning annually, partnering with hundreds of community organizations and each semester, more faculty in more disciplines join us. We are especially proud of the internet writing center we helped to create and support. It connects high school students to business and University commentators to help them gain perspective on their writing skills and to allow CU students to share their growing knowledge about writing efficacy with high school student writers.

Contact person: Dr. Robin Crews, Director of Service-Learning, crews {at} csf.colorado(.)edu

Office of Service Learning: http://csf.colorado.edu/sl/cu/cu-osl.html

COLT Community Outreach Leadership Team

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

The centerpiece of Trinity’s community outreach service efforts is Trinity’s own COLT (Community Outreach Leadership Team) which represents 15 student community service projects and Trinity’s own community service dorm, named Praxis. COLT’s steering board organizes as many at 10 one-time and special community service efforts including toy drives, food baskets, hunger awareness week, kids fair/fun fair, and clean-ups. As many as 30 students run COLT.

web: http://www.trincoll.edu/pub/student-services/ocsce/Ongoing%20Pages/colt.htm

CIVICUS, a thematic living-learning program

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

CIVICUS is a thematic living-learning program which began in fall 1999 through collaboration among the Dean of Undergraduate Studies, the Department of Resident Life, and the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS). CIVICUS is based upon the concepts of leadership, citizenship, scholarship, community service and the development of a diverse community. CIVICUS Associates, the students in the program, have the unique opportunity to build a “”civil society”" in their residence hall through the study and application of these ideas. The process of creating this residential community involves all CIVICUS members and is influenced by common readings, special programs, guest speakers and experiential learning, including community service. All first year CIVICUS Associates take a common core of courses dealing with the interdisciplinary issues of civil society. There is an emphasis on residence hall governance and leadership development.

Website: http://www.bsos.umd.edu/civicus.html

College Park Scholars (CPS)

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

The College Park Scholars program, a thematically based, two-year program for academically talented students, engages its students in both curricular and co-curricular service. All 12 of its academic programs incorporate service-learning in some form. For example, the Advocates for Children program brings children from Paint Branch Elementary School to campus for tutoring once a week. The Media, Self and Society program is developing a video to educate children about homelessness. The video will be distributed by a national nonprofit organization. This year, the College Park Scholars annual Service Day involved more than 900 students in service in the City of College Park and surrounding areas.

Website: http://scholars.umd.edu/

Co-curricular activities that support the public affairs mission

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

Co-curricular structures include an active Public Affairs Convocation Series, which this year finds Nobel Prize recipients F.W. deKlerk and Elie Wiesel addressing the establishment of a democracy and the collapse of morality. A public affairs grants program, television programs and a professional journal promote discussions on multiple stages. Over a dozen student service organizations, the Campus Volunteer Center, a Student Community Action Team, the Campus Ministries and the volunteer and applied projects of students, faculty and staff merge the body dynamic with the soul-civic to address community needs. Last year, over 88,000 hours of service were devoted to addressing community needs. Scholarships and awards for students, faculty and staff recognize and promote strong leadership in public affairs. And Kentwood Hall, our public affairs residence hall, focuses living and learning on public issues. Joining a supportive faculty and administration in overseeing and guiding the public affairs mission at SMSU is a Public Affairs Steering Committee, an Advisory Committee and an Evaluation Committee. Our strong commitment to public affairs is evident in the universal adoption this year of the “”Declaration of University Community Principles”" by our Student Government Association, the Staff Advisory Council, the Faculty Senate and the Board of Governors.

Contact person: Dr. Debra McDowell, Director, Citizenship and Service Learning
CASL web site: http://www.smsu.edu/casl/
SMSU Public Affairs home: http://publicaffairs.smsu.edu/

Service Learning Community residence hall

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

The Service Learning Community at Elon College in North Carolina has a group of 40 students live together on the same floor of a residence hall. The community is made up of approximately 35 freshmen with 5 upperclassmen who are the “”Service Learning Leaders”", having lived on the floor as freshmen themselves. Students do complete an application to be selected for the floor. They take a Global Studies class together, participate in monthly reflections and various service projects throughout the year. The group is broken into three committees: service, learning, and community with each group responsible for planning different activities. The students arrive on campus a few days before other incoming freshmen for a pre-orientation experience with activities such as the ropes course, service projects and reflections. The Community has been a great success, and students who live there often comment on what a great experience it is for them.

Website: http://www.elon.edu/ev/slc/index.htm

First-Year Experience

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

The First-Year Experience (FYE) involves an interdisciplinary core course from the general education program and a residential program. All students, in either the fall or the spring semester of their first year, enroll in the interdisciplinary core course “”Athens to New York”", which is taught in residence hall classrooms. During the course students are involved in a ten-hour service learning experience that reflects on the themes of the course.
FYE explores four thematic questions: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be a member of a community? What does it mean to be moral, ethical, or just? How do individuals and communities repsond to difference of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and the like? All classes explore these questions, begining in ancient Greece with the works of Sophocles and Plato. They travel throughout the world looking at various cultures and periods of time, including at least one non-western culture. All classes end in modern New York with a major work on the African American experience and another on at least one other ethnic group. Classes study the art, literature, history and philosophy of the cultures they are exploring, as well as their business, government, and science.
Students volunteer in soup kitchens, assisted-living complexes and other similar agencies to study the effects of race and other policy issues.

http://www.tcnj.edu/~gened/fye.htm

Chancellor s Award for Public Service

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

Though awards are usually bestowed on individuals, service is by its nature a collaborative effort. At Syracuse University, the Chancellor s Award for Public Service is made to reflect this. The award was initiated in 1992 to recognize specific residence halls for their contributions to the community. Since then, it has grown in scope to also recognize outstanding projects and creativity in community service and service-learning.

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

Website: http://students.syr.edu/depts/cpcs/nomination_form.html

Community Service House: an upperclassmen Co-op

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

Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY have a Community Service House. It is an upperclassmen Co-op with 17-20 students and is located in an old fraternity house overlooking Seneca Lake. Students are selected based on applications which include their record of service activities, response to an essay question and a letter of recommendation by someone who can attest to their service.

Residents are required to complete 5 hours of service per week as well as plan and implement 1 house wide project per semester. Residents are also expected to be on the planning committee or serve as site leaders for our annual Day of Service. The house is used for service related meetings and gatherings, and residents are expected to act as “”hosts”". Over the past two years these have included a Templeton Fellow forum, dinners with community organization representatives, feedback sessions with organization reps, and various meetings for things such as Day of Service and blood drives. Residents take turns cooking and shopping and designate one meal a week as the “”family meal”" where everyone is expected to attend so issues can be brought up and discussed and news shared. (The amount of time and effort to run the co-op end of things can take away from the service work, but the kitchen/dining space is huge and it wouldn’t fly on the campus if that space was not a co-op. It is worth the trade-off because of the other aspects of the house.)

This past semester just some of the service students participated in included: Chairing Habitat for Humanity, founding a Make-A-Wish chapter, organizing the Colleges’ days at the local soup kitchen, participating in our 8th grade mentoring program, organizing our campus holiday project that sponsored gifts for 15 families, organizing and recruiting for the blood drive and organizing our Day of Service.

Households

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

“”Households”" are patterned after early Christian communities. Small groups of 5 to 25 students draw up a covenant stating their spiritual goals and moral code. They gather for worship each week and participate in retreats, sports, social events, and volunteer work. Forty one percent of undergraduates belong to 45 households.

Mayfield Living-Learning Lodges

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

There exists at Vanderbilt an service learning initiative within the Office of Residential and Judicial Affairs called the Mayfield Living-Learning Lodges. These lodges are assigned to groups of ten students who live together in order to pursue a self-directed, year-long program of educational activities, including, but not limited to, community service projects. Requirements that each Lodge must fulfill include monthly reports, weekly meetings, lectures with professors and other staff, regular meetings or dinners with advisors and participation in an educational program for the campus community.

Lodges engaged in community service receive additional materials detailing the unique impact that student volunteers have in serving their local communities along with ideas on how to effectively enhance those contributions through service learning. As part of the recruiting process each spring, a “”showcase”" is held so that current lodges can develop booth-type presentations of their projects. Presentations have typically been versatile in using many different kinds of media, including websites and videos, to communicate the significance of their projects. Current lodge members are also utilized to recruit prospective lodges at campus wide info meetings during the spring semester.

Oversight of the lodges is shared by the Project Coordinator and the Assistant Director for the residential area where the lodges are located. Both of these people have organizational and personal connections with service learning proponents and practicioners across campus. In particular both currently serve as members of Vanderbilt’s Service Learning Task Force, which recently obtained a grant and hired a Coordinator to oversee Service Learning initiatives on campus, but not connected as yet with the Living-Learning Lodges. Campus service learning leaders (both faculty and staff) serve on the selection committee of the Mayfield Living-Learning Lodges, reviewing applications, interviewing candidates, and selecting a slate of lodges for the upcoming year. Lodges may re-apply from year-to-year.

The Mayfield Lodges are also fortunate to have had a Resident Adviser for the past two years who was at one time herself a Living-Learning Lodge member. She has been able to parlay that experience into effective leadership of and recruitment for the lodges, such that she can act as an informal liaison between the projects, the Housing Office, and the Program Coordinator. She is supervised by the Assistant Director. If a residential service learning program has the luxury of appointing an R.A. with service learning experience, I highly recommend it.

Website: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/ResEd/4may_pro.html

Residential community service programs: ICE (Inter-Community Experience) Program and a Service House

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

Southern Methodist University has two residential community service programs. The ICE (Inter-Community Experience) Program has three main components: a seminar course on urban issues, enrichment programs for neighborhood youth, and a house in the neighborhood accommodating 4 students in the program. The house was built by SMU students in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity and serves as the centerpiece for this program.

Website: http://www.smu.edu/ice/welcome.htm The second program is the SMU Service House, a cooperative living theme house for 28 student volunteers in a former fraternity house on campus. Residents, under the guidance of a hall director, coordinate everything from kitchen duty to service projects.

Website: http://www.smu.edu/housing/new/rhi/servicehouse.htm

Hall Council Service Learning Representatives

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

Each of our residence halls has a hall council – or hall student government. One of the positions that almost all of the councils elect is a Service Learning Representative. It’s a volunteer position, and here are some traditional responsibilities:

“”The Service Learning Representatives will be a liaison between XYZ Hall and the Center for Service Learning. The primary responsibilities of the Representative will be to coordinate activities in the hall that will enable residents to become involved in the campus and Bellingham community, and which will provide structured opportunities for residents to volunteer their time. The Service Learning Representative must provide a minimum of two programs per quarter that may include setting up volunteer opportunities or conducting educational programs in the hall or providing educational bulletin boards. This representative will be expected to meet periodically with a liaison in the Center for Service Learning.”"

It has given students in the halls a leadership position that focuses on service. It’s set a good example that service is leadership and a characteristic of student governance.

Website: http://www.housing.wwu.edu/reslife/rha/