EDUCATION | Driving tomorrow’s achievements
11 April 2008
Community Service
American schools encourage students to serve their communities
By Robin L. Yeager
Robin Yeager, a staff writer in the Bureau of International Information Programs of the U.S. Department of State, describes how American colleges and universities encourage students to serve their communities.
The United States has a strong tradition of volunteerism. Young people are encouraged, from a young age, to find ways to help their communities. Across the United States, colleges and universities provide opportunities for students to participate in voluntary service projects. Sometimes students get academic credit for their work, but quite often their reward is simply the satisfaction of helping someone—and of realizing that, even as young people, they can make a difference. This concept is personified by the Campus Compact, which is described on its Web site [http://www.compact.org] as "a national coalition of more than 950 college and university presidents—representing some 5 million students—dedicated to promoting community service, civic engagement, and service-learning in higher education."
Since its founding in 1992, the Office of Community Service Learning (OCSL) at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, has served as the volunteer resource center and service hub for community service and service learning for all members of the university community. More than 20,000 hours annually are served in the community and on the campus. Academic excellence, service to the community, and student success are at the heart of the program, which encourages participants to become part of the service movement locally, nationally, and globally. The University of Southern Mississippi is one of six institutions of higher learning currently partnering with Eastern Michigan University to adapt a model for academic service learning. The university also serves as the host institution for the Mississippi Center for Community and Civic Engagement [http://www.usm.edu/ocsl/].
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign explains service learning this way:
A major purpose of a liberal education is to prepare students for citizenship. We do this in part by linking student engagement with classroom experiences. A liberal education is one that helps students cultivate an attitude—intellectual and social—that is at once playful and responsible. It is playful in its willingness to play with ideas, to imagine different worlds, and to resist habits of thought; responsible in its fundamental worldly connections.
That is why connecting our students to society through public engagement is so important. For example, over a two-semester period, students in an architectural design studio undertook a challenge to design a low-cost yet energy-efficient home for the Habitat for Humanity. The driving force for creating this unique home was a complex set of values and choices rooted in civic responsibility to make homes affordable for low-income families and yet use sufficiently sophisticated technology to ensure energy conservation [http://www.union.uiuc.edu/ovp/sle/].
In the New England region, Dartmouth College, the University of Vermont, St. Michael's College, Norwich University, Champlain College, and Castleton State College have paired with myriad local governmental and nongovernmental agencies to create the DREAM (Directing Through Recreation, Education, Adventure, and Mentoring ) program, providing long-term mentors to children from low-income neighborhoods. The program started at Dartmouth in 1999 and now has locations and services throughout the state, serving children in many communities. The program combines youth development and community development principles, regular weekly meetings with long-term mentors, and recreation, including trips, sports, summer camps, and interactions with sports heroes and local leaders. Partners include housing authorities, the Girl Scouts, and Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream company [http://www.dreamprogram.org/].
Seattle University in Seattle, Washington, hosted a national conference on homelessness in November 2005. They were invited to host the fifth annual conference because in February 2005 the university had hosted Tent City 3, a mobile encampment of 100 homeless men and women, for a month. Seattle University was the first university ever to host a homeless community in this way. The national conference was organized locally by Seattle University students and members of the Washington Campus Compact, a statewide coalition of college and university presidents formed to promote civic responsibility in higher education. For additional conference information, see http://www.studentsagainsthunger.org.
One nationally recognized program is at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. According to their Web site's information for prospective students:
Many of our classes incorporate service learning right into the curriculum, including religion, education, art, philosophy, sociology, and political science. Whether it's teaching reading to disadvantaged youth, planning a marketing event for a local non-profit organization, or helping an entrepreneur with a business plan, you will find yourself working in the community for many of your classes.
Service learning doesn't stop at the classroom door. Each year 800 Furman students volunteer through the student-run Max and Trude Heller Collegiate Educational Service Corps, providing assistance to 45 Greenville agencies, ranging from the Salvation Army and the Meyer Center for Special Children to Hispanic Affairs and the Girl Scouts [http://www.furman.edu/main/community.htm].
Nearby Wofford College, in Spartanburg, South Carolina, also has a service learning program. Students of the small liberal arts college choose to volunteer for a project directly or through a local agency or organization. Some students serve as individual volunteers; others participate with fellow members of a campus group, such as a club or fraternal organization. Wofford students serve at soup kitchens (preparing and serving food to the hungry) and homeless shelters. They tutor at local schools and work at a local free medical clinic. They give Christmas presents to needy children and help with campus and community beautification programs [http://www.wofford.edu/serviceLearning/default.asp].
All types of colleges offer service learning programs. According to the American Association of Community Colleges, over half of the community colleges in the United States have incorporated some level of service learning into their programs. AACC has published a number of publications on the subject; two of interest are the eight-page Sustaining Service Learning: The Role of Chief Academic Officers and the 86-page A Practical Guide for Integrating Civic Responsibility Into the Curriculum. Both can be found at http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Content/NavigationMenu/ResourceCenter/ Projects_Partnerships/Current/HorizonsServiceLearningProject/Publications/Publications.htm.
The Albuquerque Technical and Vocational Institute (ATVI) in New Mexico provides an outstanding example of service learning at the community-college level. It received a Corporation for National and Community Service Grant, as well as the 1999 National Bellwether and the 2004 Community College National Center for Community Engagement Service Learning and Civic Engagement awards. At more than 50 local agencies, ATVI students can choose to work with youth programs, health services, social and legal services, the forest service, Special Olympics, two congressional offices, or the humane society [http://planet.tvi.cc.nm.us/experientiallearning/].
