Campus Compact » Program Models Service-Learning In Majors And/Or Minors

Service-Learning Scholars Program and Service-Learning courses

tdomf_26a6d — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:04:22 +0000

Are our students given multiple opportunities to do the work of citizenship through real projects of impact and relevance, linked to their academic learning?

The University of Utah offers opportunities to “”do the work of citizenship through real projects of impact and relevance, linked to their academic learning”" through two principal means:

1) Through 145 courses approved for service-learning credit in over 21 academic units. These units include psychology, communication, medicine, pharmacy, family and consumer studies, and nursing. Each unit completed a departmental planning process to institutionalize service-learning within their unit. Other departments are in the planning process to institutionalize service-learning; still others continue to offer service-learning courses which are faculty-dependent. A long-term goal of the Lowell Bennion Community Service Center, which is charged to support and encourage curriculum-based service throughout the campus, is to increase offerings which extend beyond a semester time frame, which are interdisciplinary, and which create permanent community partnerships.

Resources are available to help faculty members and departments to strengthen and expand service-learning course offerings. These include funds for faculty release time, funded service-learning teaching assistants, grants for department-wide planning, and technical assistance from faculty and staff experienced in this pedagogy. Examples of these course offerings include:

Biology 3460 Global Environmental Ethics, which involves students in work for local environmental organizations doing hands-on service and public policy work. Students in the course have created a community garden on campus and contribute the produce to local anti-hunger groups.
English 3400, 5410, 5420 Teaching Language Arts courses, initiated in 1998 99, engaged English education students in a partnership with West High School and explored the literacy needs of the high school and area families. Students worked with West High administrators and faculty to create a Family Literacy Center, now staffed by University students and one paid graduate student on a special fellowship. West High dedicated a classroom for the Center, which is now furnished with inviting couches, comfortable chairs, a mural developed by U and West students, and always filled with high energy learners.
New course-offerings continually come on-line. Next year the University of Utah General Education Program will initiate a service-learning course cluster for a cohort of students titled “”Community Leadership and Service: Urban Issues.”" This will introduce citizenship concepts early in students experience.

2) Through the Service-Learning Scholars Program, an intensive program designed by students for students who want an in-depth citizenship experience. Students explore their community through service (400 hours), link their experiences to their coursework (10 hours of service-learning courses), and identify and meet a specific community need (a final integrative project to address a real community need), with supervision of a faculty, community partner, student committee. Graduating S-L Scholars are recognized at commencement annually.

Contact person: Marshall Welch, Director, mwelch {at} sa.utah(.)edu

Bennion Center Service Learning web site

Political and Civic Engagement Certificate Program

tdomf_26a6d — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Work with the greater Bloomington community is integral to the minor in Leadership, Ethics, and Social Action. The Capstone project—the most significant component of the minor—may be in any field, combined with any major.

For more information go to: http://pace.indiana.edu

Joelene Bergonzi
Associate Director
Political and Civic Engagement Program — PACE
Indiana University
Ballantine Hall 132
1020 E Kirkwood Ave
Bloomington IN 47405
812-856-1747; pace {at} indiana(.)edu

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

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

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.

An institution formed around a driving mission

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

One of the most important factors in whether or not change will work in higher education is whether that change has been incorporated into the mission statement of the institution, and whether that mission is understood by faculty, staff, and students. Many colleges and universities were founded with a mission of serving and bettering their community. Yet most institutions have been around too long for their constituents to recall the circumstances of their founding. Monterey Bay, California, gives us a glimpse of how vividly mission can resonate in an institution that does know its roots.

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

Public Service Scholars

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

On many campuses, service-learning courses are given particular emphasis for honors students. At Stanford University, a select group of honors students are chosen to be Public Service Scholars in their junior year. These students spend a three-week immersion in the community and meet weekly in a service-learning seminar in the urban studies department. They also incorporate community-based learning and action research into their thesis, which they work on with two advisors, one from the Stanford faculty and one from the community.

Haas Center for Public Service website

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

Certificate Program in Community Action (PICA)

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

The PICA program offers a unique opportunity for students to combine course work in any major with community-based experience. PICA scholars are academically motivated and community-service oriented. Students apply their majors to concerns with community issues; any major is eligible, ranging from the natural sciences to social sciences to the humanities and fine arts.

Students enter the PICA program in their sophomore year, and a certificate is awarded at graduation to those who successfully supplement a major with a set of requirements organized around a senior integrative project that addresses a specific community issue. These requirements include four courses outside the major, a summer internship, and the senior project, which is an independent study or honors thesis in the student s major field. PICA scholars also participate in a series of workshops that develop a variety of citizenship skills.

Website: http://www.conncoll.edu/academics/centers/hollerancenter/pica.html

Fulfilling general education requirements through service

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

In fulfillment of a general education core requirement in the social sciences, students at Brevard Community College may opt to take a course entitled, Community Involvement. This service intensive course includes a commitment of 72 hours of service time. Students in this popular program may choose from over 250 different projects or placements. In class, students evaluate their experiences through a host of reflective activities including journals, short papers, and a community issues debate.

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

Website: http://www.brevardcc.edu/CSL/content.cfm?page=cslChoices

“”Across the curriculum”" initiative to instill skills of active citizenship

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

The Vision Statement of Tufts commits the University “”to foster an attitude of giving back ; an understanding that active citizen participation is essential to freedom and democracy; and a desire to make the world a better place.”" To deliver on this vision, Tufts President John DiBiaggio, its Trustees, faculty, administrators and students are working to make values and skills of active citizenship a hallmark of all its degree programs. We are building upon substantial existing public service programs located throughout the University. The next step in this process is to establish the concept of the University College and over the past two years we have put in place several program elements. In the fall of 1999 the Trustees took final action to formally launch this ambitious “”across the curriculum”" initiative.

The centerpiece of the College is a certificate program in Citizenship and Public Service. Undergraduates and graduate students earn the certificate by completing a set of courses that incorporate community service and civic education, and by finishing a substantial community service project.

While Tufts public service activities are broad in scope, the UCCPS places emphasis on work to strengthen preK-12 education. The focus on this initiative on education for active citizenship is accompanied by a challenging research agenda: Why has civic engagement in the U.S. declined? How are the forms of citizen participation changing and what causes these shifts? What is the nature and meaning of civil society in different parts of the world? Tufts is encouraging and supporting faculty research on these topics and is sponsoring a book series on Civil Society through the University Press of New England. A public Forum on Civil Society in April 1999 celebrated publication of the first two volumes in this series.

Contact person: Rob Hollister, Dean of the University College of Citizenship and Public Engagement
UCCPS web page: http://uccps.tufts.edu/

Leadership Studies Minor

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

The mission statement of Mount Ida College highlights our commitment to service learning: Mount Ida College provides a student-centered education through rigorous academic, leadership and service learning experiences for a diverse community of learners whose individual members practice civility, contribute positively to society, and demonstrate competence in their fields.

All students enrolled in the Leadership Studies Minor are required to take the Leadership Studies Seminar, a sophomore-level course that focuses on the development of personal leadership skills, analysis of leadership styles and strategies, and awareness of the civic and ethical responsibilities of leaders. Leadership Studies Seminar students complete a community service project which links the academic curriculum of the course to a need in the college or local community and allows students to observe and reflect upon the connection between leadership and service.

In the spring semester of 2000, eight Leadership Studies students and the course instructor formed a team representing Mount Ida College at a day-long “”servathon”" in the local Newton, Massachusetts community. “”Newton Serves”" brought together 1,000 community volunteers to work at project sites throughout the city, for the benefit of 40 local non-profit agencies and the city government. Projects included cleanups, painting, landscaping, carpentry, working with the elderly, and clerical tasks. The Mount Ida team attended initial planning meetings and opening ceremonies at City Hall, and spent a whole day cleaning out the old Newton Boys and Girls Club and landscaping the new Boys and Girls Club. The students had an extended meeting with the mayor of Newton, who stopped by to thank team members for their efforts.

Back in the classroom, students wrote an article for the school newspaper urging other students to experience the rewards of community service. They also wrote retrospective essays linking their personal values, goals and observations with what they had learned about leadership characteristics, philosophies and styles during the semester. Of particular interest to all was the interaction of Mount Ida team members with each other and with community members involved in the project. Students were encouraged to reflect upon their own leadership and team-building skills and identify successful and unsuccessful leadership strategies employed by organizers of the events. These discussions led to a broader examination of the relationship between citizenship and participation, on campus and off-campus. The students evaluated the project as successful on personal and academic levels, as they appreciated the opportunity to practice skills developed in the classroom. The students also made a commitment to continue to volunteer in the local community.

Mount Ida College Opportunities in Leadership web page

Service Learning Practicum for Special Education majors

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

This service-learning course has been developed as a first of many practicum experiences courses for Coppin State College Special Education majors. Its purpose being to enhance these students in the areas of civic literacy, cultural diversity and social conscious. To this end, this course has been designed to meet the transition needs of children with disabilities from elementary to middle school. This project will provide: transitioning elementary school children with special education needs with

The aforementioned components of this service learning course will be conducted by the Coppin State College students enrolled.

“”Kids Plus”" program: raising community aspirations

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

“”Kids Plus,”" which is funded by the National Corporation for Public Service and by Bates, with support from area agencies, strives to raise community aspirations and learning while engaging Bates College students, faculty and staff in meaningful service-learning projects. It focuses on the Longley School and the Lewiston Multi Purpose Center neighborhoods and acts as a vehicle to encourage service providers and residents to identify community needs and access the resources to meet those needs. The intent of “”Kids Plus”" is to assure that in-school efforts assist in implementing Maine Learning Results and that out-of-school efforts address the community’s request for high quality activities for all ages. Work focuses on student learning, arts programming, resident support and community building.

Some examples of activities that have been a part of “”Kids Plus”" include:

Contact Person: Sue Longley, Bates College/Longley School Project Coordinator, smartin {at} bates(.)edu
On the web: http://abacus.bates.edu/admin/offices/service-learning/

Senior thesis or service experience

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

The experience of service-learning can help students to make connections that span the breadth of their academic careers. Students who major in psychology at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, can choose to sum up their psychology education by using a service-learning project in place of, or combined with, their senior thesis. Since its inception only two years ago, the program has grown to draw nearly half of all departmental majors every year.

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

Website: http://abacus.bates.edu/acad/depts/psychology/require.html#thesis

Student Leadership Academy

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

The Leadership Academy at Lansing Community College uses service-learning to help students develop the skills to become leaders in their community. Every fall, 15 students are selected to be part of a two-year series of four classes designed to teach skills such as leadership, event planning, and program evaluation. Service-learning is incorporated throughout the program, providing students with ways to connect their lessons in leadership to meaningful work in the community. At the end of the program, every member of the academy is required to do a final leadership project in the community.

Student Leadership Academy web page

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

Various service-learning opportunities for students

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

The mission of Concordia University, St. Paul is to prepare its students for thoughtful and informed living, for dedicated service to God and humanity and for the enlightened care of God s creation. In light of this mission, from the first day students set foot on the Concordia campus, they are presented with opportunities to engage in extra-curricular activities on campus and in activities that serve the community. These extra-curricular opportunities prepare them for achieving academic goals, as presented in the philosophy and practice of Campus Compact.
Service learning at Concordia University, St. Paul is incorporated into the curriculum in a variety of ways. As in many institutions, some professors and some courses lend themselves more effectively to such academic involvement in community issues. For example, students in the College of Education and Director of Christian Education (DCE) programs complete 100 service learning hours as part of their Human Relations course requirements.
Among the many service learning opportunities available, students may assist in the classrooms at neighboring Higher Ground Academy, tutor students at Central High School or work with teens in the Future Force program. Particularly helpful is nearby Skyline Towers, a low-income housing development at which more than a dozen different languages are spoken. Students have been involved in research about the challenges and strengths of new immigrant families. One recent student, as a result of her participation in this type of research, changed her vocational goal from being a family counselor to being an international family counselor. Other students have conducted research and interviews to gain a better understanding of the relationship of immigration, global economics and global politics. Through education courses students are better able to understand the changing challenges in education and the different learning styles of individuals. They also become aware of how community and family pressures have an impact on learning.
Concordia University faculty and staff lead by example, making it clear to students that involvement and commitment are the keys to civic responsibility. Concordia encourages its entire campus community of students, faculty and staff to connect with their campus and their community, thereby building a solid foundation on which to build a life of service to others.

General Studies curriculum

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

Elon College s distinctive General Studies curriculum helps students develop civic competencies and habits for leadership in their local and global communities. The four-year, fifty-nine hour General Studies program invites students to commit to their own belief systems and actions as they are confronted with cultures and beliefs other than their own. Through experiential and collaborative learning, General Studies courses and activities emphasize critical and connected thinking, foundational skills (communication, quantitative, and computing), an appreciation for a diversity of ideas and people, and the development of the whole person. The program s overriding goal is leadership development.
Contact person:Steve Braye, General Studies Program Director, brayes {at} elon(.)edu

General Studies web site: http://www.elon.edu/gst/

Curricular reform by the president: integrating service-learning into academics

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

When James Harris isn t leading students on spring break service projects, he keeps himself busy leading an innovative new model that integrates service-learning into academics at Defiance College. For starters, every student is affected by the curricular reform spearheaded by President Harris. In their first year, students take a service-learning seminar. After that, students take three more service-learning courses in their major, and at least one other, so that they have taken at least five service-learning courses by the time they graduate. In addition, President Harris instituted the Presidential Service Leadership Award, which recognizes 20 incoming students for their past community service by awarding them $7,500 a year to continue their community work in college.

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

Graduate program in physical therapy with a service-learning component

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

Chatham College supports good citizenship through wide-ranging community service and service-learning programs that result in approximately 12,000 hours of community service each year. The single largest campus contribution is through the service-learning component of the graduate program in physical therapy, which was developed by faculty member Pamela Reynolds. Chatham s physical therapy students complete a 2-4 week service experience during their final clinical training period. Students are required to report on their service activities in writing and in an oral presentation.
This service experience focuses on contributions individuals make beyond their professional role. It will enable students to begin to internalize their roles as service-oriented citizens and health care professionals. Service experiences will include, but not be limited to working with a disadvantaged, under-served or cross-cultural population. Students will demonstrate social responsibility, citizenship, and advocacy, including participation in community and human service organizations and activities. Students will expand their perception and understanding of health and illness and the variety of meanings these terms carry for members of differing groups.
In the past four years, students have served 63 sites in 12 states and 4 countries. Sites have ranged from the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles, Haiti to the Ecumenical Women Solidarity Fund in Zagreb, Croatia, to the Center for Creative Play in Pittsburgh.
Online at http://www.chatham.edu/academic/pt/physther1.htm

“”Values, Ethics, and Social Action”": a minor program

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

Allegheny College has launched a minor to engage students, faculty, and community partners in theoretical and practical inquiry about the nature of citizenship, service-learning, and democracy. This interdisciplinary academic program will allow students to understand social action and its ethics intellectually as well as practically. The minor with roots in the psychology, philosophy, and economics departments strengthens the curricular layer of Allegheny’s already deep commitment to the Crawford County community.
“”Values, Ethics, and Social Action”" (VESA) will make the primacy of education for citizenship more explicit for students, faculty, and community partners. With support from the Demmler Fellowship, which funds faculty initiatives in academic program enhancement, six VESA faculty engaged in course development. Rather than scattered, unconnected efforts in service-learning and social justice, VESA offers a coherent course of progressive study that connects the disciplines as it encourages students to explore citizenship and values. Students must complete six courses, including interdisciplinary introduction and Capstone seminars (all of which include a substantial service-learning component). Other courses explore issues of wealth, poverty, politics, ethics, community, behavior, environmental justice, moral theology, gender, and diversity. Students enrolled in the minor must complete experiential learning components to accompany classroom learning: a service-related internship and 84 hours of community service. Students will be placed in various agencies addressing issues of poverty, education, welfare, and teen pregnancy with at-risk children and youth, the elderly, and adults. The joint aspects of this theoretical and practical learning will attempt to move students from talking about justice to promoting it, from debating about good citizenship to living it, and from community service to social action.
Engagement in our community and significant reflection in the classroom helps students understand what it means to value citizenship in a democratic community. VESA enhances students abilities to think critically about social systems, with the community service component acting as a laboratory in which they are led to confront their assumptions and learn problem-solving skills in the context of socially meaningful work that addresses real community concerns. In a time of increasing social problems and scarce resources for social programs, students can supply much needed ideas, skills, and time to meet community challenges. Likewise, by working in partnership with local non-profit agencies, we can offer our students opportunities for learning about and contributing to our shared community in a way that is grounded in realism as well as academically rich. VESA demonstrates to our community that Allegheny’s commitment to the common good is linked in vital ways to our educational mission and that we are proud to engage in mutually beneficial partnerships with our neighbors.
Contact person: Elizabeth Weiss Ozorak, Associate Professor of Psychology and VESA Coordinator, eozorak {at} allegheny(.)edu
On the web: http://webpub.allegheny.edu/group/interdis/VESA.html

Capstone Seminar in Public and Community Service Studies Major

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

The Public and Community Service Studies Major at Providence COllege requires a Capstone Experience :

PSP 450 451 Capstone Seminar
2 semesters, 6 credits
A yearlong seminar for senior majors that synthesizes and deepens academic learning with practical experiences. The seminar will typically focus in on some of the larger concepts foundational to the major and the Institute and will give students an opportunity to draw together the complex, interdisciplinary material they have studied, including in their specialized track, during the previous three years. The seminar will culminate with each student submitting a significant written research project or product, in consultation with faculty.
Feinstein Institute for Public Service web site: http://www.providence.edu/psp/

Feinstein Institute for Public Service and a liberal arts major and minor in Public and Community Studies

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

A number of colleges and universities offer courses not only that employ community service as a method of instruction and research, but that teach about community service as a subject of study in itself.
When it was founded four years ago, the Feinstein Institute for Public Service at Providence College in Rhode Island became the first university program in the nation to offer a liberal arts major and minor in Public and Community Studies.

The major offers students the opportunity to consider in-depth the religious, democratic, and ethical ideals that underlie community service. Interdisciplinary in nature, the major is built around service-learning coursework and community engagement.

Certain basic conceptual themes form the skeleton for students learning: community, service, compassion, public ethics, social justice, and social change. Students encounter these themes in readings, explore them in the community, and dig further through reflection in coursework. A progression of pedagogical methods over the four years of study brings students from the initial introduction of key concepts, to continual re-evaluation of those concepts, leading to new questions and deeper insight over time. Like all undergraduates studying a liberal arts major, students are expected to acquire certain skills through their course of study: skills like critical thinking and problem solving, which lend themselves to service-learning. At the same time, the community service major carries with it certain skills that are specific to the course of study: skills like community building, community action research, and leadership.

By the time students earn their degree in Public and Community Studies, they have a thorough, first-hand understanding of the ways in which community service works, and does not work. They have a grasp of the intricacies of terms like citizenship, ethics, and democracy. Most of all, students learning is tied to their action in the community. They understand change, and how to be agents of change; they understand leadership, and how to be leaders; they understand community, and how to interact with communities.

This sort of study not only provides better understanding of community and public studies, but it lends legitimacy to the concepts that underlie community engagement as a whole. When service is only something we do, it is often seen as a simple idea that can be taken at face value. When service is something we study, it is seen for what it really is: a complex concept whose implications for social change and democratic societies are only beginning to be understood.

See Capstone Seminar description
Public and Community Service Studies web page
Feinstein Institute for Public Service web site

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