Making the Transition to Collaborative Service-Learning

From Planning for Higher Education: Making the Transition to Collaborative Service-Learning
by Angela Lewellyn Jones, Jeff Stein, and Pamela Kiser. Abstract: "Elon University is presented as an exemplar of how administrative, student services, and faculty support are needed for the appropriate planning and implementation of collaborative service-learning. Citation: Angela Lewellyn Jones, Jeff Stein, and Pamela Kiser. 2008. Making the Transition to Collaborative Service-Learning. Planning for Higher Education. 36(4): 17–22.

Academic service-learning is based on the value of university-community partnerships. But what about campus partnerships? Who on campus best understands and most effectively administers academic service-learning programs? Locating service-learning programs solely in academic affairs or student affairs departments certainly simplifies the process. But the traditional approach of assigning all things academic to faculty and all things cocurricular to student affairs neglects two fundamental academic service-learning principles: (1) the interconnected nature of psychosocial and cognitive development in transformative education, and (2) the democratic and collaborative underpinnings of academic service-learning pedagogy.

At Columbia, Students Mix Studies With Volunteer Work, for Credits

Columbia University is conducting what this New York Times article calls an "unusually aggressive push of the popular 'service learning' concept. The organization Campus Compact is the best place to go for additional information on service learning. SCUPers who are employed in the corporate sector may wish to learn more about that organization's Consulting Corps.

In an unusually aggressive push of the popular “service learning” concept, 500 engineering students will earn academic credit this year participating in projects around Harlem: designing swings for people in wheelchairs, building an environmentally sustainable greenhouse at a local high school and creating a trash can that can be used by the severely disabled, and others.

For the past six years, such service learning has been a graduation requirement for all of Columbia’s engineering majors, in what experts say is one of just a handful of programs nationwide to make mandatory what used to be known as volunteerism.

“We obviously want to create engineers and applied scientists who are technically adept, but also effective in this global society,” said Jack McGourty, the associate dean of Columbia’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “We want to create students who are socially aware.”

An Invisible, Annual $7B from Higher Ed to the Outside Community from Service Learning. Wow!

So, how often do you hear someone thank higher education for the $7B+ of volunteer work that comes from Campus Compact-related colleges and universities each year?

Campus Compact-an organization founded at Brown more than two decades ago to encourage college students to become more active citizens-reports a 60 percent increase in service participation over the last five years, and more than $7 billion worth of volunteer work coming out of its nearly 1,100 member schools annually.

"More students are doing service because they firmly believe that collective action is the best way to get out there and accomplish something," explains Campus Compact President Maureen Curley, who says that 98 percent of Campus Compact schools now offer service learning courses, and that 86 percent have created their own community service or service learning offices.

Downtown: A Community-Campus Collaborative Course to Prepare Students for Community-Based Research

A case study of the development of a service learning program in Trenton, New Jersey: "The Trenton Youth Community-Based Research Corps (TYCRC) at the College of New Jersey engages undergraduate students in research that helps make a difference in the lives of children - particularly those living in poverty. The students and I partner with nonprofit social service agencies that lack the resources to hire external researchers to conduct community needs and assets assessments or to study the effectiveness of their programs. Such research is increasingly necessary for the economic survival of nonprofit community-based organizations, not to mention for developing effective programs and services."