Education Commons^™

Service-Learning Program Community Partner Handbook, Julia Van Der Ryn, Emily Wu

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Dominican’s Service-Learning Designated Courses require that students work with their community partner for approximately 20-25 hours during the semester. The service hours must occur weekly and continuously throughout the semester, and the time spent constructively and productively towards the needs and goals of the community.

Ideally, a community partner has existing programs and infrastructure that can provide our SL students with opportunities to gain consistent (weekly) and extensive (semester-long) experiences participating and interacting with community members. In turn, SL faculty intentionally guide their students to reflect on and analyze their weekly community experiences to make connections with course content.

Service-Learning Faculty Handbook [Version 3], Julia Van Der Ryn, Emily Wu

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Dominican University’s mission provides a strong foundation for service-learning, a pedagogy that creates intentional links between academic education and community experience where each strengthens the other. Service-learning engages students, faculty, staff, and community partners in collaborative and responsive action, dialogue, and reflection to address community-identified needs, meet learning goals, expand our perspectives, and increase civic participation. In this way service-learning creates reciprocal benefits for all involved:

1. The University is able to live out its mission and enhance its role as a vital and active partner in the community;

2. Faculty are supported in connecting innovative teaching, research/scholarship, and community …