Service Learning Commons^™

Fostering Emotionally Intelligent Bullying Prevention Through Youth Engagement, Jan L. Urbanski, June Jenkins

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

School staff play an important role in preventing bullying, but they can’t do it alone. Schools must meet the social-emotional needs of students for bullying to decrease and these efforts are more successful when youth are involved. This session will explore engaging youth by promoting youth voice, changing social norms, and using class meetings to teach social-emotional learning skills.

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 …

An Examination Of Volunteer Motivations And Characteristics Between Required Volunteer Service And Non-Required Volunteer Service In College Students: An Exploratory Study, Amanda C. Bastien

Honors College Theses

Volunteerism in the undergraduate years can enhance students’ academic development, civic responsibility, and life skills (Astin & Sax, 1998). Whether a student volunteers in high school can be a predictor of continued volunteerism in college and later in life (Planty & Regnier, 2003; Astin & Sax, 1998). Participants of this study were 283 college students enrolled in first year seminar courses at a large university in the Southeastern United States. Participants completed a questionnaire developed by Gage and Thapa (2012) which included the Volunteer Function Inventory (Clary et al. 1998) that served to investigate the volunteering characteristics and volunteering motivations …

Cultural Transformation Of Schools With Challenging Environments And At-Risk Populations, Sheril Morgan Mrs., Madison Tomlinson Mr.

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

Learn how any school (k-12) can use the Character Education Partnership’s (CEP) 11 Principles of Effective Character Education to transform culture resulting in increased attendance and academic achievement with decreased behavioral problems. Attendees will hear how specific high-risk schools decreased bullying, increased morale, and impacted their communities through the development of a school Touchstone, service learning, and advocate families.

Utilizing Participatory Action Research To Assess The Interagency Collaboration Of A Community-Based After-School Program Partnership, Jessica L. Render

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study utilized a community-based participatory action research (PAR) approach to assess the development of an interagency collaborative and its replication at other locations. The partnership formed to provide a service-learning site for university students as well as a community-based after-school program for children living in a low-income housing community. Research participants completed the levels of collaboration scale developed by Frey and Colleagues (2006) along with a questionnaire about their desired level of collaboration, current and needed resources, and knowledge of other partners’ goals. Collaboration is loosely defined as a group of partners working together to reach shared goals. The …

College Students’ Attitudes Towards Adults With Developmental Disabilities: Does Direct Contact Make A Difference?, Caroline E. Greene

Honors College Theses

Data were collected from thirty college students who participated in an alternative break trip and approximately seventy college students who did not attend the trip. Study subjects served as counselors at a camp for adults with developmental disabilities. Data were collected using five measures: a) before the week started, students filled out a survey which questioned their comfort level and attitude when interacting with this population; b) this same survey was administered to a random sample of college students who did not attend the break trip c) at camp, students kept a journal throughout the week documenting their experiences; d) …