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

]]> http://www.compact.org/program-models/program-models-awards-and-recognition/public-service-scholars/1431/feed/ 0 http://www.compact.org/program-models/program-models-campus-community-partnerships-andor-campuscorporatecommunity-partnerships/the-san-diego-dialogue/1455/ http://www.compact.org/program-models/program-models-campus-community-partnerships-andor-campuscorporatecommunity-partnerships/the-san-diego-dialogue/1455/#comments Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 tdomf_26a6d http://compact.localhost.com/?p=1455 It started with a community that wanted to know more about itself, a roundtable discussion, and a class of sociology students, standing on the border between San Diego and Tijuana, tapping on the windows of cars to ask the drivers four questions:

What is your nation of residence? Why are you crossing the border? How frequently do you cross in a month? For what purposes do you cross the border?

The research that the students compiled dispelled a number of common misconceptions about border crossings here, at the most traversed transnational border in the world. Contrary to popular belief, nine out of ten crossings were not by tourists or smugglers, but by commuters who were going back and forth as part of their daily routine.

Faced with this new information, community leaders on both sides of the border suddenly realized that the economies and lives of their two cities were intertwined. Policy makers came together to discuss how they could make border crossing easier for these every day commuters. By the time discussion was through, their efforts had been profiled by papers from The San Diego Tribune to The New York Times, and the United States Congress had passed a bill authorizing expansion of the border to make crossing easier.

This small study with large implications provides important insight into democracy. Democracy, ideally, is a system where people come together to engage in civil discourse a process of participating in informed discussion of how their community looks today, and how they envision it looking tomorrow. Unfortunately, community members often don t have access to the information they need to make informed decisions about their community, and there are typically few places in a town or city where people can come together for such discussion.

The San Diego Dialogue, an initiative of the University of California that was the springboard for this cross-border research project, seeks to rectify both of these situations. The Dialogue is the name given to a center based at the university founded to provide the information, public education, and forum for effective civil discourse in the San Diego-Tijuana region.

The Dialogue is led by a group of one hundred regional leaders of industry, government, the media, academic institutions and nonprofit organizations in Mexico and the United States. The group identifies issues of regional significance in three issue areas: regional integration; equity, diversity, and urban development; and globalization. For any particular issue, the progress of promoting civil discourse follows five steps. First, a plenary session is held providing public education and introducing the issue. Second, working groups are formed that include community members interested in the issue. Third, faculty and research fellows from the university provide applied research on the topic to give the working groups information they need to make informed decisions. The fourth key step in the development of civil discourse is the holding of community forums. The Dialogue regularly convenes workshops, roundtables, and community discussions that focus on research findings and regional issues. The group also sponsors a regular forum for discussion of cross-border policy issues that attracts participation from nearly 500 business, government, and academic leaders; and a regular breakfast forum series in which 200-300 business executives and public officials discuss economic issues and trends.

Once discussion of an issue is complete, the last step in the process is the publication of results. These may be published as separate articles available to the community, or as part of the San Diego Dialogue Report, the group s monthly newsletter.

By the time proceedings are published, community members have become involved in the process of sharing ideas that makes democratic communities come to life. Starting with a sociology class that got people talking all over the nation, the University of California, San Diego, has developed a project that has gotten people talking in a much more important venue: their own communities.

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

For more information: http://www.sddialogue.org/

Contact: Jana Everett, Political Science Dept, at Jana.Everett {at} cudenver(.)edu or 303 556 3513

In October 2000, The Center for the Advancement of Service Learning (CASL) was established to promote the insitutionalization of service learning at Howard by developing and promoting initiatives that integrate service learning into existing courses and curricula throughout the university. CASL also provides training and technical assitance to faculty and staff for infusing service learning pedagogy into existing courses and redesigning curricula to include a service learning component.

Website: www.howard.edu/CenterUrbanProgress/CASL.html

Excerpted from Diversity Digest Summer 2001

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

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

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

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

Website: http://www.nic.edu/coursedescriptions/CourseDescSection.asp?Course=Sociology

Website: http://www.indiana.edu/~iubnurse/home/service/service.html

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

Website: http://cas.bellarmine.edu/departments/psychology/index.asp

From

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

Contact: Matthew J. Pantera, chairperson of the Recreation and Tourism Department, at (413) 748-3693 or the Admissions Office at (800) 343-1257.

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

For the school violence program students interviewed children, parents, and school administrators about the efficacy of violence-prevention programs to see the difference between how children and adults see the problem.

For the multiple intelligences study students designed 6 stations based on six of the intellegences and observed each child for a week at each station. The children in the study all suffered from academic, self-esteem, or behavioral problems. At the end of the six week study the teachers felt they had a better appreciation for each of the intelligences and that children discovered new strengths.

Website: http://abacus.bates.edu/admin/offices/service-learning/

Contact: Kim Cummings, Professor, Sociology, Kalamazoo College at cummings {at} kzoo(.)edu. (“”I would be delighted to help other campuses/professors replicate this unique 10-week program.”")

Contact: Dr. Glenn Perusek, Political Science Dept, at gperusek {at} albion(.)edu?or (517)629-0533

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

Website: http://ssw.che.umn.edu/centers.htm#CITYSONGS

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

The mayor obliged this unusual request, and identified twelve Brainerd residents. Central Lakes staff promptly contacted these residents and invited them onto campus, where they met and watched a brief film about asset-based community development. That night, inspired by the film and the discussion that followed, the group of twelve voted unanimously to form a residents association. With that, SEBRA South-East Brainerd Residents Association was born.

South-East Brainerd is the oldest part of Brainerd. Few residents own their own homes, incomes are low, and crime is high. In 1995, most neighbors didn t know one another, and there was little communal activity. Working with the college, SEBRA set out to change all that. The result is a neighborhood transformed not in grand ways that will put Brainerd on the map, but in small ways that highlight the vitality of human relationships. SEBRA began holding monthly meetings, which now bring together 65 or more community members each month. The association began printing a quarterly community newsletter, which Central Lakes work-study students help to write and distribute. They established an annual neighborhood clean-up day, which brings the whole neighborhood together once a year.

Students in a sociology class helped the neighborhood to develop an asset map, documenting residents skills and talents, which they can use to exchange services. The association brought in the local police to conduct crime prevention workshops in the neighborhood, and residents have volunteered their homes as safe houses for youth on the way home from school. Students from Central Lakes published oral histories of the community based on interviews with elderly residents.

Community members report that since the founding of the association three years ago, they know more of their neighbors, speak out more frequently, and find the town cleaner and safer. Indeed, since 1995 crime in the neighborhood is down 40%. Since that pivotal day three years ago, Central Lakes has played an integral role in the community. It has furnished Brainerd residents with the tools for reform, and manpower in the form of students and faculty to help facilitate their efforts. But perhaps the greatest contribution of college constituents has been their insistence that the association set its own agenda, and mine the resources of its own community, so that residents can accomplish change on their own. We know we ve done our job well, staff at the college s community service office explain, when we re no longer needed. Even if they say they are no longer needed, Central Lakes students, faculty, and staff continue to share ideas, advice, and work with the neighborhood. Through the relationships they have built, they have done more than serve South-East Brainerd; they have become a part of it.

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

By following a semester of one of Dr. Hesser s courses entitled, Urban Communities, we can draw a picture of a high-quality curricular service-learning experience.

In order to learn about urban communities, Professor Hesser tells students on their first day of class, you will use the community as your laboratory. Students are pleased to hear this, many of them having enrolled because they were intrigued by the fieldwork component, and the chance to engage in actual observation that brings their classroom theories to life.

But then the professor adds a twist. There is an ethical problem with this kind of observation, he tells students. If you are going to take these observations from the community, you also must give back to them. Your relationship must be reciprocal. In fact, Dr. Hesser has already spent many weeks before the beginning of the semester contacting neighborhood organizations to see if they are in need of student volunteers. From this, he develops a list of organizations from which students may choose ensuring that the organizations that get student volunteers are organizations that need student volunteers. In the Urban Communities class, 25 students are split into five groups of five and sent to neighborhood organizations, where they will provide service over the course of the semester.

Tying students work in the community into academic theory is the major thrust of curricular service-learning. Dr. Hesser achieves this through a carefully constructed combination of observation, reflection, discussion, and presentation. Students are given a field journal to record observations from their experiences with the neighborhood organizations. Rather than being asked simply to free-write in their journal as they might do if the experience were not connected to academic learning students are asked to write one entry each week based on the course readings for that week. For instance, students study the concept of horizontal relationships in the class the ways different organizations work together within the boundaries of the community. For the corresponding journal entry, they are asked to write about any experience in their time at the community organization that reflects theoretical elements of horizontal relationships.

Back in class, students return to their groups of five and exchange journals, often coming across new discoveries, which they are asked to discuss with the rest of the group. Through this exchange, students recognize the variety of ways their theoretical lessons from class can be applied to the neighborhood organizations where they are working. During other class sessions, students are mixed into groups of five with one from each neighborhood organization. Here, students are able to learn from the very different experiences that others have had in very different neighborhoods. Once again, students are exposed to the great variety of ways that a theory, always the same on paper, can look very different in practice.

At the end of the semester, the teams of five students collaborate to produce an oral and written report. In the report, they use the basic theories of the course to describe the neighborhood association where they worked and to discuss the service that they have performed. By the time they have completed their curricular service-learning experience, students in the Urban Communities class are able to discuss these theories with the rich background of real experience and the understanding of how these theories can be used to help communities.

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

Contact person: Dr. Garry Hesser, Sociology Dep.’t, hesser {at} augsburg(.)edu

Over 375 Greensboro, N.C. elementary, middle, and high school youth ages 8-18 have been trained in conflict resolution through this service project. The participants conducted on-site training sessions with the students. The sessions involved anger management, role play, one-on-one counseling, and mediation training. Area representatives with expertise in conflict resolution were also invited to provide further training for the youth and the Social Work majors.

This project has not only impacted the young people involved, but has also affected their families, their schools and their communities. Bennett College students have learned how to handle conflicts and how to help young people resolve conflicts without engaging in violence. They have been prepared to service the communities in which they will reside as graduate students, employees and socially aware citizens. Their program was grounded in the instituted goal of social justice through service-learning and participation.

Social Work Program web page: http://www.bennett.edu/social/swork.htm

To Dr. Ferguson, director of the Institute for Neighborhood and Community Leadership at the University of Dayton, this was not a sign of despair, but a sign of progress, one of the many steps students take in recognizing the depth and complexities of what it means not just to be a problem-solver, but to be a citizen. As the student quoted above continued working with Dr. Ferguson, she recognized that there were many levels where she could make a difference and many communities from the nation, to the state, to the neighborhood where issues need to be addressed.

Students often come to community service naively optimistic about their ability to single-handedly solve problems. Richard Ferguson sees his role as one of developing more aware citizens: people who recognize the way that they as individuals fit into groups; people who are able to work within large systems to influence policy and achieve broad social change; people who are able to see in small interactions, the broader forces that lie behind them.

Leadership and Community Building a seminar co-taught by Dr. Ferguson and Brother Raymond Fitz, S.M., president of the University of Dayton is designed to help students recognize the complexities of society and develop skills that are central to democratic citizenship: skills like decision-making, deliberation, participation, and understanding policy change.

Each year, students in the seminar work with one or two neighborhood associations in a distressed area in Dayton. Through readings and a series of meetings and presentations with the neighborhood association, the course addresses a number of key citizenship skills.

In face-to-face meetings with community residents, students engage in discussion of community issues. Together, they share ideas and insights about the problems that can be addressed around critical issues such as housing, safety, families and children, and economic development. In this process, students build skills of civic discourse and participation, learning to communicate effectively with others and to think through problems together.

Back in the classroom, students read theoretical work by various sociologists and political scientists who discuss the connection between individuals and society in modern America. This gives students the opportunity to see the connection between social forces and individual lives, another key connection to make as citizens.

Students return to the community for three more of their weekly seminars, engaging in a process of deliberative decision-making with community residents. Through each issue, residents and students discuss their vision for a better community and how it can be achieved with the resources that are available.

At the end of the course, an audience of university professors and staff, members of local nonprofits and foundations, various elected and appointed city officials, neighborhood residents, and others are assembled for a presentation by the students. This presentation is accompanied by a 50-100 page report in which they summarize key action steps that can be taken and policy changes that can be implemented to help the community achieve its vision.

By the time they are done, the participating students many of whom are studying political science, public administration, sociology, or communications have developed knowledge, attitudes, and skills that no classroom could teach. They have seen themselves, often for the first time, as part of the web of human interactions and social policies that continually affect one another. In the process, they have acted not just as problem-solvers or service providers, but as democratic citizens.

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

Website: Institute for Neighborhood and Community Leadership: http://www.udayton.edu/~includ/