Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

College Credit For Community Service: A "Win-Win" Situation, Janet Patterson Fleischauer, John F. Fleischauer

Higher Education

We need only look at the newspapers today to know that insufficient numbers of college and high school graduates are seriously considering social service careers to meet community needs. Job applications are down at human service agencies. Twenty-first century slogans have not helped charitable fund drives meet goals of past years. Education is being challenged to respond to a social deficit in preparing citizens for community service.

Addressing School Board And Administrative Concerns About Service-Learning, Carolyn S. Anderson, Judith T. Witmer

Special Topics, General

Community service learning as a philosophy and a program has been driven at the school level largely by the knowledge, enthusiasm, and commitment of individual teachers. Recently community agencies, politicians and government agencies, professional organizations, and various resource centers around the country have joined in promoting these programs, which help students use service opportunities as a source of significant learning.

Linking Traditional And Service-Learning Courses: Outcome Evaluations Utilizing Two Pedagogically Distinct Models, Jerry Miller

Higher Education

University students in two advanced introductory classroom-based courses in psychology were offered the opportunity for simultaneous enrollment in a content-related section of a large community service learning course. Students selecting the option did not substantially differ from students who did not select it. Participating students rated the experience as being significantly more valuable than did non-participating students. Students did not differ either in their reports concerning gains in personal development or general mastery of course concepts, or in final course grades received, but participants did report an enhanced ability to apply concepts outside of the classroom. Differences in reports between …

Service Learning: A New Approach In Higher Education, Barbara W. Carpenter, Jacqulin S. Jacobs

Higher Education

Southern University is rare, if not unique, among public institutions in requiring undergraduates to complete sixty-clock hours of community service before graduation. The purpose of this initiative was to heighten the sensitivity of graduates to the indispensable role that volunteerism must play in our society. We also envisioned collectively addressing some of the ills of the State of Louisiana by having a pool of 16,000 students in the Southern University System contributing to the alleviation of human suffering and social decay. In this paper, we describe some of the noteworthy accomplishments that the program has made over the past three …

Teaching Empowerment, Helen Fox

Higher Education

The contradiction inherent in "teaching empowerment" is that students need to learn specific, empowering ways to understand and interact with community people while at the same time feeling empowered, themselves, by the way the service-learning course is designed and taught. This requires a delicate balance between "starting with students where they are" and insisting they confront issues that make them uncomfortable. The author describes her attempt to do this in a new community service learning seminar for freshmen focusing on empowerment education.

Community Service And The Hospitality Curriculum, Florence Berger, Marc Ackerman

Higher Education

Voluntary community service and human-relations courses should be an integral part of hotel administration courses. Such courses allow students to see how their actions can affect other people, appreciate service, dismantle stereotypes, become aware of social issues and develop other skills which they can apply as members the hospitality industry. To become effective, however, these courses should first instill in students the value of initiative, self-motivation and commitment.

Lessons In The Common Good: Voluntarism On College Campuses, Jodi Raybuck

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article describes the current interest and activity in community service and the undergraduate educational experience. Many examples of campus-based voluntarism with a social reform twist set the stage for passage of the National and Community Trust Act of 1993. What is still necessary, however, is recognition by faculty, administrators, and agency officials that the community service experience must be structured properly, so that both service and learning take place. Drawing on the efforts at Babson College and direct involvement with the national scene, this analysis offers recommendations for implementing a program that helps to cultivate good citizenship and values.

Minnesota Plan For National And Community Service (1994-1997), Minnesota Commission On National And Community Services

Service Learning, General

Minnesota has a legacy of national leadership in fostering volunteerism and community service. The oldest surviving volunteer center in the United States was established in Minnesota in 1919. The state has generated service organizations such as the National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC), the Campus Outreach Opportunity League (COOL) and the National Retiree Volunteer Coalition (NRVC), now providing leadership as part of the national service movement. Minnesota's bipartisan ethic of civic commitment has stimulated governors and legislators to break new ground in state community service legislation .from the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s to the first commitment …

A Marriage Made In Heaven: Community Colleges And Service Learning, Judith S. Berson

Higher Education

Today's college student is changing. As America's social problems continue to grow exponentially, more and more students are seeking solutions to those problems through community service. A graduate journalism class examining the rise of student community service referred to it as "a quiet phenomenon taking place on campuses across the country--a surge in volunteerism among a generation of Americans dismissed for their self-interest, apathy, and nihilism" (Shapiro, 1994, p. 85). President Bill Clinton's inaugural address called upon Americans to demonstrate concern for one another when he said, "By fate, the fortunate and the unfortunate could have been each other." With …

Youth Program Targets Crime, Norwalk Economic Opportunity Now, Inc.

Partnerships/Community

A NEON proposal will become reality this summer for 100 youth ages 10 to 15. A demonstration program called Summer of Safety will guide youth to use crime prevention strategies and to undertake projects to increase safety in their neighborhoods. NEON's innovative proposal won highly competitive funding by the Corporation for National Service, an initiative of the Clinton Administration. The activities will take place at South Norwalk community Center, Roodner Court Neighborhood Center, and G. W. Carver Foundation from June 21 through August 20, 1994.

The Transformative Power Of Education, Johnetta B. Cole

Higher Education

It's a joy to be here today as your partner in learning and your partner in change. Continuing education has been, and will always be, a vital element in the life of our citizens, communities, and society. The National University continuing Education Association has demonstrated once again its foresight and leadership in choosing the theme of powerful partnerships for change. Education is the key to seeing, understanding, and confronting the major challenges we face today, and we need to enlist each and every one of us, from all sectors of society, in the essential work strengthening our communities.

Creating The New American College, Ernest L. Boyer

Higher Education

How can American higher education successfully contribute to national renewal? ls it possible for the work of the academy to relate more effectively to our most pressing social, economic, and civic problems? These questions, while always appropriate, seem especially relevant today because, for the first time in years, our colleges and universities are not collectively caught up in some urgent national endeavor.

Needs Assessment For The Learn And Serve America Program, L. Richard Bradley

Service Learning, General

In almost every community there are a wide range of agencies which seek to address what are commonly understand to be "the needs of the community." Activities range from caring for the environment to ongoing assistance to those with various disabilities to the more temporary needs for food, shelter, and housing for those whose lives may be in transition due to job loss or change or change in marital status. Yet in spite of the commitment of the dedicated people associated with these agencies, most agency directors and community leaders agree that the needs usually outstrip available resources.

To fill …

Beyond Prevention Curricula: A Guide To Developing Alternative Activities Programs, U.S. Department Of Education

Curriculum

This guide is designed to help educators and youth workers better understand how programs of alternative activities can effectively be used to supplement school-based efforts to prevent alcohol and other drug use among youth, and to encourage schools to become more involved in program development and implementation. It seeks to clear up some of the confusion over what constitutes a program of alternative activities and what its goals should be, to improve understanding of the potential value of this approach, and to recommend promising strategies for improving the effectiveness of these activities in preventing and reducing use of alcohol and …

The Participatory Action Research Model, University Of Pennsylvania Center For Community Partnerships

Partnerships/Community

From the Office of the President to the dormitories of first-year students, there is a strong commitment to community service at the University of Pennsylvania. The Center for Community Partnerships serves as Penn's bridge to the community by channeling the idealism, skills, and abilities of Penn faculty, staff, and students and the resources of the University to help improve the quality of life in our city and neighborhoods. Since 1992, the Center for Community Partnerships has been the cornerstone of community service efforts at Penn. Building upon the University's strong foundation of community-based programs and drawing upon Benjamin Franklin's legacy …

Community, Neighborhood And Family In Ancient Athens And Modern Philadelphia, Ralph M. Rosen

Higher Education

I am delighted to submit to you my report on the freshman seminar which I offered this past semester, Community, Neighborhood, and Family in Ancient Athens and Modern Philadelphia (Classical Studies 125). It was, indeed, an extremely rewarding experience for me, and I am quite certain that the students in the class found it so as well.

As you know, although I had a number of related objectives in running this course, overall I was concerned to see whether I could make students feel that the study of antiquity is as relevant to our contemporary world as I have always …

Placement Services In Today's Economy, Jennifer K. Carter

Higher Education

To fully understand placement issues at the University of Missouri-Columbia (MU) one must realize that career services functions are decentralized. MU has eight individual career services offices that focus on issues related to careers, primarily for juniors and seniors. These career services are supported by the following schools: Business & Public Administration; Engineering; Education; Human and Environmental Sciences; Library Science; Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources; Law; and Journalism. This structure leaves Arts and Sciences students and freshmen and sophomore students, as well as deciding students to be served by the Career Center (CPPC). To develop and encourage open communication between …

Undecided/Undeclared: Working With "Deciding" Students, Robert M. Mcdaniels, Jennifer K. Carter, Cynthia K. Carter, Karin I. Candrl, Anna M. Wieberg

Higher Education

Nationally, it is estimated that 77 percent of all freshmen and sophomores are in the process of deciding on an academic major (Rayman, 1993). The student body at University of Missouri - Columbia (MU) is no exception. In addition, a number of students have chosen majors, but for the wrong reasons: "My parents want me to be a . . .", "I must have a major in order to get good academic advising . . .", "I have to choose a major or I can't register . . .", "Everyone else has a major . . .", etc. These negative …

Review Of Research And Evaluation On Service Learning In Public And Higher Education, Richard J. Kraft, James Krug

Higher Education

While service-learning, community service and volunteer programs have been a part of schools and colleges in the United States for decades and there have been a range of research and evaluation studies, there is a general lack of solid evidence on its effects. One of the major difficulties in evaluating or researching service learning programs is the lack of agreement on what is meant by the term and exactly what it is meant to accomplish. While some programs emphasize social growth, character development or civic responsibility, others attempt to study psychological development and effects of program.s on self-concept. Moral judgment …

Agency And Community College Leadership Development: Social Science Internships, John Stuart Erwin

Higher Education

When Tracie Huls, a 21-year-old sophomore at Illinois Valley Community College, learned about dysfunctional families the example did not come from a sociology textbook. Huls observed a children's support group at a shelter for battered women operated by Alternatives to Domestic Violence. She volunteered there for a short time through Illinois Valley Community College's internship program.

"One of the children in the group told me her father had died in a fire. I told a staff member at the shelter. The staff member explained that the father was not dead, but that the child was coping with the parents' divorce …

The Effect Of Community Service Work On The Moral Development Of College Ethics Students., Judith A. Boss

Higher Education

A study designed to test the effect of community service work on college ethics students found that community service work along with discussion of relevant moral issues is an effective means of moving students into the post-conventional stage of principled moral reasoning, as measured by Rest's Defining Issues Test. Other benefits of community service work are also discussed in the paper.

Making A Difference? Student Volunteerism, Service Learning And Higher Education In The Usa, John Mohan

Higher Education

This paper reviews evidence concerning the recent growth of volunteerism among college students in the USA. It describes the various pressures to expand such activities and outlines steps being taken to promote them. Reforms of student financial aid can be used to facilitate service among students who would otherwise have to engage in substantial paid work to afford education, while educational institutions are taking numerous steps, most notably through integrating community service and academic study, to promote such involvement. The more general issues raised by all this are: the likely impacts on servers and served of this activity; whether education-based …

Roles For Higher Education: A Resource Guide, National And Community Service

Higher Education

Thank you for your interest in the Corporation for National and Community Service's grant programs. Together with the AmeriCorps and Learn and Serve America: Higher Education grant applications, the Corporation's "Principles for High Quality National Service Programs," and the tape of the Corporation's video conference called "National and Community Service: Roles for Higher Education," this resource guide should provide you with a clear understanding of the Corporation's purpose and programs. In this guide you will find the following: National and Community Service: Opportunities for Higher Education; Questions & Answers; Campus-Based Programs: Tips for Proposal Development; Service-Learning: An Overview; Resource List; …