Civic and Community Engagement Commons^™

The Age-Less Citizen: Cultivating A Civically Engaged K-12 Community Through The Use Of Service Learning, Chelsia I. Douglas Mpa

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

The Age-less Citizen will analyze evidence-based civic education studies and explore proactive student engagement strategies to build an individualized nonpartisan action plan for each school represented. From sending election reminders home by a kindergartener, to including local school board meetings on school newsletter and calendars, attendees will take away practical tips and tools to restore faith in the younger generation's ability to improve our democracy.

Sticky Situations: Understanding The Law And Life, Krystal Banks

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

Law and life go hand in hand. Understanding the law and how it connects to life can be an effective tool in teaching youth and adults the value of making good decisions when it comes to life and the law. Sticky Situations places real-world situations in the context of learning how to apply the law and effectively respond to life's sticky situations.

Entrepreneurship Education Empowers Youth To Change Their Lives, Marianna Brashear, Jason Riddle

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) aims at equipping Title 1 schools with free, hands-on, engaging materials that any teacher can facilitate either individually or in a classroom setting with no background in entrepreneurship necessary. These versatile lessons, courses, and workshops teach the entrepreneurial mindset optimizing opportunities for grades 8-12 students no matter which life/career path they choose.

Leading Students And Teachers Away From Adversity And Towards Success, Joshua Covey, Amanda Pascale, Eve Miller, Matthew Ohlson

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

The Leader in Me is a whole school transformation process. It teaches 21st century leadership and life skills to students and creates a culture of student empowerment based on the idea that every child can be a leader. The session will share best practices from the field and particpants will leave with proven strategies for increasing outcomes and creating college and career ready leaders.

Service Learning And Community-Based Research: Implementation, Benefits, Challenges, And Future Directions, Ariana Postlethwait Phd, April Rand Phd, Sarah I. Pilgrim Phd, Carmelita Dotson Msw

Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning 2016

Rationale: Service learning and community engagement are a natural fit for many disciplines. Service learning projects provide students with an opportunity to apply course content to real world situations (Harder, 2010), developing projects that will benefit clients, agencies, and communities. Service learning is used across a variety of disciplines including social work (Hostetter, Sullenberger, & Wood, 2013) nursing (Murray, 2013) and business (Payne, Campbell, Bal, & Piercy, 2011). Working in a group within a service learning context provides a multitude of benefits including greater interest, motivation, and engagement; improved communication skills; real-life application of course content; and skills …

Designing And Documenting Community Engagement For Tenure And Promotion, Lesley M. Graybeal, Debra Burris, Amy Hawkins

Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning 2016

Research over the past two decades has built a compelling case that perceived institutional barriers, including lack of recognition of service-learning pedagogy in tenure and promotion decisions, are one of the greatest deterrents to faculty use of service-learning (Abes, Jackson, & Jones, 2002; Hammond, 1994; Morton & Troppe, 1996; Ward, 1998). Furthermore, faculty members perceive these institutional barriers at every stage of implementation of service-learning pedagogy (Hou & Wilder, 2015). Knowing how to design a service-learning experience, then, with an awareness of the tenure and promotion process can help faculty not only create robust community-engaged courses and research projects, but …

How Are We Impacting Communities In Short-Term International Service Immersion Programs?, Eliza Wethey

Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning 2016

The presentation will allow participants to critically examine service immersion and service-learning programs in an international context. While impacting students is an important outcome of international service immersion programs, equally important is our impact on communities. How are we considering the needs of the community partners we are working with? How are we ensuring the sustainability of the programs after our short-term involvement. How are we preparing students for work in these contexts?

This presentation will explore these questions in the context of Virginia Tech and VT Engage's international programs and give suggestions for how we can implement more sustainable …

Multimedia Service Learning Partnerships, Chandra Clark

Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning 2016

Goal: I would like to share the success of working with 30 different nonprofit, community, and campus organizations with senior electronic news and sports majors. At a time where every student has to really stand out at job interviews, a service learning project that incorporates everything they have learned in their curriculum can take them to the next level by engaging them in the community they are about to serve.

Rationale: Following the tornado that devastated Tuscaloosa on April 27, 2011, I witnessed nonprofits who were held hostage by the web companies that hosted their content. They couldn't make changes …

A Neighborhood Team Approach To Strengthening University-Neighborhood Relations, Tito Luna

Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning 2016

It takes very intentional efforts on behalf of a university to listen to what its neighbors are saying and to respond. Furthermore, it is the university’s responsibility to communicate with its off-campus students about their rights as tenants, their responsibilities as community members and the importance of being civically engaged. The goal of this presentation is to inform participants of VCU’s efforts to collaborate with its surrounding neighborhoods, the City of Richmond and its off-campus students. Participants will begin to consider what they can incorporate into their current engagement efforts in the surrounding community.

VCU’s Neighborhood Team was created in …

Building Students’ Civic And Moral Responsibility And Assessing Outcomes Through Service Learning, Lori Moog

Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning 2016

Colleges and Universities have great potential to make a positive difference in meeting community needs and addressing complex social and economic problems through service learning because it is a distinct program from other campus-community partnerships due to its deliberate intent to work collaboratively through service that is linked to course work. Developing service learning programs that engage students in meeting community needs also helps students meet their own educational goals. Integrating service and academic study optimizes resources for the community. Because of these mutually beneficial goals, service learning fits into higher education’s mission of service to the community. Moreover, in …

The Impact Of A Community-Based Engaged Learning Experience For Students And Community Partners Through Cancer And Exercise Wellness Programs, Emily Simonavice, Laura Childs

Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning 2016

There are a growing number of cancer survivors within our society that experience negative physical and psychological side effects from cancer related treatments. Exercise has been shown to be an effective way to attenuate some of these negative side effects; however, reports indicate that the majority of cancer survivors do not engage in adequate amounts of exercise. Thus, the goal of the present study was to incorporate a five-hour service learning project into the Exercise Science curriculum in which students would educate cancer survivors about the benefits of exercise and basic exercise prescription information. Additionally, students implemented a comprehensive exercise …

It’S A Data Job, But Someone’S Gotta Do It, Heather Mack

Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning 2016

In this session, we will:

• Contextualize the community engagement field’s data management needs
• Introduce a CE Data Cycle, a framework that participants can use to conceptualize CE data as a system
• Guide participants through a basic CE data management needs assessment
• Review two approaches for meeting those needs, including pros and cons for each, and best practices and lessons learned about both approaches

1. Align with staff in Institutional Research and Information Technology
2. Deploy technological solutions

• Brainstorm how to meet gaps in CE data management
• Outline data management objectives for 2016-17 and concrete next steps to achieve them

Rationale for the …

Think Inside The Blocks: Health Literacy Outreach To Disadvantaged People In Their Own Environment, Nancy Patterson

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

This bilingual (Spanish/English) poster highlights six creative health literacy outreach projects that have proven to be successful in increasing participation in health-related events in their communities and in boosting health literacy in the process.

For example, in Georgetown, South Carolina, a beauty salon owner, concerned about her clients’ frequent frustration with trying to decipher medical information, partners with her local public library and is grant funded to provide a Wellness Workstation in her salon. Years later, her clients research health information between services using the workstation, evening health literacy classes are regularly conducted for community members and continued funding has …

Flip The Prison: Using A Holistic, Interdisciplinary Approach To Transform Closed Prisons And Adjudicated Youth, Debby Hanmer, Noran Sanford, Jason Hutchens, Michael Menefee

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

Flip the Prison: Is a collective Impact Model for transforming closed prisons into farms and educational centers utilizing mental health therapy, youth focused, sustainable agricultural entrepreneurship and service learning to stabilize adjudicated youth in the community. Of interest to educators, mental health clinicians, veterans, community leaders, clergy and entrepreneurs.