Bayside, NY—The practice of service learning, applying what is learned in the classroom to the needs of the community, has flourished in a wide variety of academic disciplines at Queensborough Community College which held its second regional conference last week, Assessing the Learning Behind the Service, featuring the internationally renowned speaker and author, Dr. Edward Zlotkowski.
The audience was filled with representatives from educational institutions from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as major non-profit organizations that attended Queensborough’s regional conference to learn, share resources and collaborate. Attendees included: Wagner College; St. John’s University; Northhampton Community College; Empire State College; Raritan Valley Community College; as well as New York Institute of Technology, Kingsborough Community College and LaGuardia Community College of The City University of New York (CUNY); Homes for the Homeless’ Saratoga Family Inn; Queens Historical Society and the Bayside Historical Society.
The conference marked the culmination of Queensborough’s three years of effort on an institutional, regional and national level, and was funded by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), NY/PA Campus Compact Consortium, Con Edison, Learn and Serve and National Grid.
The keynote speech was delivered by one the nation’s foremost leaders in service learning, Dr. Edward Zlotkowski, a professor of English at Bentley College, who founded the Bentley Service Learning Center and has devoted the last two decades of his life to service learning. A prolific writer and sought-after speaker, Dr. Zlotkowski is Senior Associate for service learning projects at the New England Resource Center and Senior Faculty Fellow at the National Campus Compact.
“I am impressed by Queensborough’s service learning objectives which emphasize that students should draw practical, life lessons from their classroom experiences and strive to make cross-cultural connections,” said Dr. Zlotkowski. “The fact is that service learning is a particularly effective way for students to excel in the classroom, in their communities, and most importantly, for themselves.”
Several Queensborough faculty members spoke about their recent service learning projects and how dramatically it has impacted their students and their own idea of teaching, in general.
“I was on a flight returning from a trip to India, pondering what our service learning topic should be, when I noticed the exhaust fumes streaming out of the airplane’s wing,” said Dr. Simran Sehmi, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences and Geology. “That gave me a great idea—to have my class study carbon footprints and present the results of our research to the College community. As a result of our hard work – I learned as much as they did – we discovered that we all need to make significant lifestyle changes and think more about sustainability. From the research we collected together, we produced brochures and gave a presentation to the campus community, christening the College’s first official Earth Day.”
Service learning was introduced at Queensborough in 2006 through funding by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), and has involved hundreds of students in a range of academically challenging projects, including a collaborative statistics project with New York University’s Center for Immigrant Health and Queensborough’s math education students who used their statistics lessons to analyze the incidents of tuberculosis in Queens; and a solar panel energy research project intended to help offset future energy needs.
“This important conference marks a major milestone in establishing Queensborough as an emerging leader in community college service learning pedagogy,” said Josephine Pantaleo, Director, Learning Center, Basic Educational Skills, who received the 2009 National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) award. “In just three years, more than 700 students have participated in our service learning program.”
Eduardo J. Martí, Ph.D., President of Queensborough Community College, a champion of service learning, adds that, “I strongly believe that the practice of service learning goes hand in hand with academic success and it will continue to play a major role at our institution, especially in the Freshman Academies, which will be launched this fall.”
Queensborough Community College, a College of The City University of New York, will embark on a banner academic year beginning in the fall of 2009 with the celebration of its 50th Anniversary, the launch of the Freshman Academies and the opening of the new Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center. Queensborough, located on a picturesque 37-acre site in Bayside, Queens, offers a rich liberal arts and science curriculum, as well as career and pre-professional courses. Over half of the faculty holds doctorates compared with 21% of faculty in other community colleges nationwide. Comprising one of the most diverse populations of any college in the U.S., more than 14,000 students pursue an Associate degree or Certificate program and another 10,000 students of all ages attend continuing education programs. Among the campus’s prized resources are the Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center, the QCC Art Gallery, and the Queensborough Performing Arts Center (QPAC), created to stimulate ideas and intellectual curiosity while exposing students and the public to culture and the arts. Please visit our website at qcc.cuny.edu.
Contact: Alice Doyle, 718-281-5591; Fax 718-281-5033; adoyle {at} qcc.cuny(.)edu
