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
