Campus Compact » Program Models Service-Learning In Science, Math, Technology, And/Or Engineering

Environmental Conservation Course

tdomf_26a6d — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Students in G315 Environmental Conservation Course spend two Saturdays with the Nature Conservancy on site with a naturalist eliminating non-native species and planting native species. The naturalist is available for environmental questions while the students contribute maintaining the conservation areas.

Migration Geography activity for G110 Introduction to Human Geography students

tdomf_26a6d — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Students interview senior citizens from the Indianapolis Senior Citizen center about their historic and ancestral migrations so as to better understand the geography of migration. The Senior helps the student with the exercise while the student creates an excel spread sheet and relevant maps detailing all the residential moves in the life span of the Senior as well as ancestral moves. The document created can be added to the senior’s genealogy charts while at the same time the student has a learning opportunity. In some of the pairings this activity has linked the elder with a student that continues beyond the course.

Service Learning in a Workshop in Greenway Management

tdomf_26a6d — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This course, offered through the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), is designed to provide students an opportunity to work as a team using skills learned in other SPEA courses to analyze complex environmental problems related to current semester projects. Projects include: (1) assessment of spatial and temporal variations in use at a city greenways trail (Monon Trail), including the effects of rainfall and temperature on trail use; (2) analyses of the use of a greenways trail (White River Trail) near the Lilly Arbor Project; and(3) surveys of users along the White River Trail. Community partners include the Indianapolis Department of Parks and Recreation. The results of students projects generally are used to support development of the greenways system through data and conference presentations.

Previous projects have provided students with the opportunity to provide useful information and original research using skills that prepare them for professional careers.

For further information contact Greg Lindsey at glindsey {at} iupui(.)edu. or the SPEA website at www.spea.iupui.edu/

Tutoring and mentoring recently arrived Hispanic High School Students

tdomf_26a6d — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Students in Geography of G323 Latin America Class tutor High School Hispanic students in a variety of subjects and in turn my students learn something about the geography of Latin America as they ask questions about the origins of the student.

Service-Learning in Geography

tdomf_26a6d — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Service Learning is an important component of undergraduate education in the Department of Geography at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Students enrolled in our introductory physical geography courses have the opportunity to serve in various ongoing environmental projects at local parks and urban watershed areas throughout the city of Indianapolis. Participants contribute to the restoration and conservation of fragile urban ecosystems. Students have also participated in similar projects with the Indiana Nature Conservancy at other locations throughout the state. In the Fall of 2003, 29 students participated in designated work days across central Indiana.

Please contact Nathan Polderman (npolderm {at} iupui(.)edu), Tim Brothers (tbrother {at} iupui(.)edu), or Bob Beck (rbeck {at} iupui(.)edu) for more information.

A Pilot Project to Teach Basic Botany to Fifth Graders

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

Students enrolled in the “”Plants and Society”" course have the option of participating in the Botany Service Learning internship. In additon to the three-credit course and one-credit lab students fulfill a three-credit internship where they plant gardens at ASU and the local middle school and teach school children about plants and their life cycle. Students reflect on their work by posting to an on-line class message board twice a week and responding to classmates postings. Their grade in the class is based on their postings, on-site participation, and work with the children,

Contact: Diann Peart, PhD. at 602.965.3266 or AODEP {at} asuvm.inre.asu(.)edu

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

Gardening for Humanity

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

As part of both introductory and upper-level biology courses students studied the wildlife in a water recharge area and the effects of global warming and pollution in that area. At the end of the course the students wrote reseach papers and shared what they learned with local children from the Boys and Girls Club.

Contact: Dr. Pushpa Ramakrishna at RAMAKRISHNA {at} cgc.maricopa(.)edu or 602.732.7219
Website: http://personalweb.cgc.maricopa.edu/pecos_faculty/pushpa/web/ecology.html

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

The Build/Design Workshop

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

An architecture professor has designed a course for her students where the students build a house in conjuction with Habitat for Humanity. The students also meet with the families who will be living in the constructed home to find out what would be their ideal house. These criteria are then taken into account when the students design a house for future construction projects.

Contact: Mary Hardin, assistant professor 602.965.3536 at mary_hardin {at} macmail.inre.asu(.)edu

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

Community Gardens and Native Plant Restoration

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

Students from CSUMB helped neighborhing community groups develop native plant gardens as part of a program called Return of the Natives. Students also involved at-risk youths in the project as a way of getting them interested in science and college. For Earth Day students brought the teenagers to the CSUMB campus for restoration planting. The Pebble Beach Company’s Environmental Divison has agreed to mentor service learning students in landscaping with native plants for the next time the course is taught. The interdisciplinary approach appeals to majors from science, education, and other fields.

Contact: Laura Lee Lienk, Return of the Natives Coordinator, 408.582.3689 or Laura_Lienk {at} monterey(.)edu

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

Service Learning Institute

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

Since its founding as a program integrally connected to the planning faculty’s academic priorities, the university’s Service Learning Institute (SLI) has pursured a very specific purpose: providing students with the skills required for participating in culturally diverse communities by supporting the implementation of curriculum that combines subject matter acquisition with experiences of active citizenship. Service learning at CSUMB is a core teaching strategy which intentionally incorporates our university’s innovative vision: we believe that service learning is the most effective way for students to learn about difference, develop cultural sensitivity, and understand issues of equity within local communities.

CSUMB students are also required to take a service learning course offered in a major discipline before graduating. Faculty in each major have been challenged to design courses that meet major specific learning outcomes while involving students in projects and placements responsive to community needs. Though numerous courses each semester are taught in majors as service learning courses (over 40 each academic year), discipline based faculty, generally, have been unable to effectively incorporate themes of diversity and unity in their service learning teaching. They need additional skills and training if they are to access service learning’s potential for stimulating dialogue and attitudinal change in students.

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

Study structured around service: an interdisciplinary approach

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

When academic study is structured around service, rather than the other way around, lines between disciplines can become blurred. Service-based courses often require an interdisciplinary approach, because the problems of a community cannot be addressed through a single discipline. A new course package at San Jose State University will focus on local parks from the perspective of three disciplines: biology, political science, and engineering. The added bonus: as students work to increase access to the parks and enhance bio-diversity of plant life, the theme-based package the courses intertwined around a single theme will fulfill their general education core requirement.

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

Engineering Service Learning

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

Students design assistive technology based on requests submitted by people with needs from the Developmental Disabilities Center and the community at large. Mechanical engineering students created the Breathe Better Bus to teach children about smoking, allergies, asthma, air pollution, and lung diseases. CU students designed the interactive learning station on board a remodeled school bus that will now start its tour to 12 schools in the Denver metropolitan area.

Contact: Christina Monroe at the Service Learning Program at 303.492.7718 or servicel {at} colorado(.)edu

Service Learning Meets the Environment at Clear Lake

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

Joel Ostroff, an associate professor of microbiology at Brevard Community College, has designed a microbiology service learning component where students test the school’s lake water to determine if it is safe for plants, animals, and humans. Students from the course are trained in the use and maintainance of the equipment and in turn teach local underprivileged teenagers how to conduct the tests as well. Brevard students are not required to participate in the service, but recieve an extra 10% on their test grade, which accounts for 50% of their course grade.

Contact: Joel Ostroff at Ostroff_J {at} Al.Brevard.cc.fl(.)us or 407.632.1111 ext 62550

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

Think Globally, Act Locally, Model Individually

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

Central Florida Community College’s environmental service course linked community service, participation in the political process and public policy development through the study of environmental science and student service. The course (which fulfills biological or physical science credit for participating students) was divided into three parts in which students learned about global environmental problems, worked to solve local environmental problems, and strove to become individual agents of change. The course’s community contact and group research helped students understand how to use the political process to address community problems.

Website: http://www.cfcc.cc.fl.us/las/science/

Transformation of a sewer plant into a fish farm

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

Nova Southeastern University, near Ft. Lauderdale, took over an abandoned sewer plant that attracted vandals, and then sandblasted every crevice and built a fish farm in it. Nova Professors and students conduct research and work with local residents to raise 50,000 tilapia (a light fish that tastes like trout), but once the farm makes a profit, the community will reap the financial rewards. “”You can see the neighborhood improving, because there s civic pride,”" says oceanographer Bart Baca, center director. (David Marcus, U. News & World Report, May 24, 1999, p. 61.)

Contact: Bart Baca, Director of Aquaculture Programs, baca {at} nova(.)edu

Davie Aquaculture Research Center web site: http://www.nova.edu/ocean/aqua/ (this is the former sewage plant where the fish are grown)

Arachnophobia Impact Community

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

As part of a service learning project students from an Animal Behavior course, an education course, and a non-major biology course developed a program for fourth graders about spiders. All the Milliken students participated in workshops to develop presentations for the school children, but the service represented varying fractions of the students overall grade.

Contact: Marianne Robertson, assistant professor at mrobertson {at} mail.millikin(.)edu or 217.424.3754

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

Instrumental Methods Analysis Course: reinvigorating a dull and difficult course

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

At Loyola University in Chicago, Instrumental Methods Analysis was once a course notorious for being both dull and difficult. The only students who enrolled were senior chemistry majors who were required to take the course. Faculty dreaded teaching it. But when Dr. Alannah Fitch began teaching the course, she decided that things were going to change. Dr. Fitch searched for ways to reinvigorate the course, and hit on three ideas. First, she would tie the course to social issues. This would appeal to the religious values of Loyola, a Jesuit university which had recently put particular emphasis on its service mission. There were two issues that Dr. Fitch recognized in the community, and felt her students could help to address. One was the dearth of women and minorities in the science community. The other was in the Chicago community, where there had been an increase in lead poisoning among residents due to unhealthy levels of lead in city pipes.

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

Testing through service: teaching science to sixth graders

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

It is said that the best test of whether someone has learned something is whether they can teach it. Marianne Robertson, professor of biology at Millikin University, has her students meet with sixth graders once a week. Dr. Robertson is able to tell how well her students understand the lessons she is teaching them by gauging how well they are able to teach the sixth graders. At the same time, the younger students are exposed to scientific lessons, get to develop their own projects, and put together a science fair with the help of their college tutors.

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

Contact: Dr. Roberson at mrobertson {at} mail.millikin(.)edu

EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) project

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

Standards in various fields call for students to demonstrate social skills that are developed through interactive work with the community. At Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, engineering faculty in the EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) project teach their students communication skills by having them discern the needs of community members and design producets to meet those needs. For instance, after meeting with physically disabled children and the adults who work with the children, one group of twelve students crafted a dollhouse that was made physically and mentally exciting for the children. In the process, the students developed their skills not only as engineers, but also as caring members of the Lafayette community.

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

More information on the project:
The Program is a service-learning program centered at Purdue University and supported by a Learn and Serve America Higher Education grant. Students from freshmen though seniors work in multi-disciplinary teams to solve engineering-based real world community problems in partnership with community service and education groups. Last year, the program involved 249 students from 20 different university departments, including liberal arts as well as engineering majors. Notre Dame and Iowa State universities also have EPICS service-learning efforts.

The Results:Last Spring, Purdue EPICS students developed a database for the Tippecanoe County probation court and county caseworkers. Other initiatives included a “”web information system”" for the local Habitat for Humanity – EPICS, and facilities designed for Purdue students with disabilities. Purdue and Notre Dame EPICS students set up database systems for community agencies serving the homeless in Lafayette and South Bend. A survey of service-learning participants resulted in 75% saying EPICS made them more resourceful, 70% reported a positive impact on organizational skills and 83% said their communication skills benefited.

Why It Works: Local industry joins faculty members advising the 20 EPICS student teams. Starting this fall, an advisor from Microsoft in Washington State will conduct a pilot experiment in distance advising through video teleconferences. The Local Corporate Partners Program and Corporate Team Sponsor Program seek to match an industry partner with each team. There is strong support from the universities. The Program Director, Professor William Oakes, was chosen as a Campus Compact Faculty Fellow.

Lessons: Building on the success at Purdue, Notre Dame, and Iowa State, EPICS is expanding to involve three additional schools, including Wisconsin-Madison, Georgia Tech, and Case Western Reserve. Microsoft Research endorsed EPICS as a model for service-learning and has pledged over $1 million in software, training materials and books. The expanded effort is supported by a Learn and Service America Higher Education grant.

Website: http://epics.ecn.purdue.edu/

Contact: Co-Directors – Leah H. Jamieson, lhj {at} ecn.purdue(.)edu or William C. Oakes, oakes {at} purdue(.)edu

Professional work and social responsibility: a construction technology class restores a 100-year-old farmhouse

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

Students who do not plan to work in the service sector may consider community service a nice diversion, without recognizing its connection to their future work. Service-learning that is tied to students professional aspirations can help them see the importance of being socially aware not just in school, but in their future workplace. Students in a construction technology class at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, (IUPUI) learned citizenship skills in the process of restoring a 100-year-old farmhouse for use by a low-income family. Students conducted walk-throughs of the neighborhood, photographed local architecture, talked with neighbors, and worked with the area s community development corporation. At the completion of the course, they had done the job of professional contracters, while filling the role of responsible citizens.