students as colleagues: developing student leadership and building capacity for service-learning
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Students as Colleagues: Developing Student Leadership and Building Capacity for Service-Learning. Nicholas Longo & Erin Bowley April 29, 2008. Arriving Where We Began…. We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Students as Colleagues: Developing Student Leadership and Building Capacity for Service-Learning
Nicholas Longo & Erin Bowley
April 29, 2008
Arriving Where We Began…
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
- T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Why “Students as Colleagues”
Historical: Cycle of Service-Learning New generation: the Millennials
Instrumental: Students as enablers
Inspirational: Student voice as foundation for Democratic engagement
Better epistemology Good pedagogy
A Brief History of Student Role
1980s: response to “me” generation and creation of COOL and Campus Compact
1990s: institutional resources and academic service-learning
Creation of Corporation for National and Community Service and growth of Campus Compact
Focus on disciplines: Zlotkowski, E., (Series Editor) 1997-2004, Service-Learning in the Disciplines, 20 monograph series
2000s: Engaged university and return to promise of student leadership
2001: Wingspread Conference on Student Civic Engagement leading to New Student Politics
2002: Raise Your Voice campaign launched
2007: Millennials Talk Politics (CIRCLE)
See especially, Goodwin Liu (1996), Origins, evolutions, and progress: Reflections on a movement. Metropolitan Universities: An International Forum 7(1), 25-38.
New Generation
Millennials (born after 1985): more civically engaged, with interest in deliberation and experience doing community service
See especially Longo, N. and Meyer, R., College Students and Politics:
A Literature Review (CIRCLE Working Paper, 2006) www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/WorkingPapers/
WP46LongoMeyer.pdf
Millennials Talk Politics (CIRCLE Report, 2007)www.civicyouth.org/?page_id=250
Instrumental: Students as enablers
Taking service-learning to next level on campuses requires new resources and infrastructure, which are unlikely to come in the form of new staff
Connecting academic and student affairs: development of “whole person”
Inspirational: Democracy, Epistemology, & Pedagogy
Student Voice As Core Component of Civic Engagement
“We declare that it is our responsibility to become an engaged generation with the support of our political leaders, education institutions, and society…The mission of our state higher education institutions should be to educate future citizens about their civic as well as professional duties. We urge our institutions to prioritize and implement civic education in the classroom, in research, and in services to the community.”
- Oklahoma Students’ Civic Engagement Resolution, 2003
www.actionforchange.org/getinformed/student_ink/student_ink-OK.html
Student Voice Leads To New Ways of Knowing and Learning
Promising Practices
Identifying Student Leaders: Scholarship Programs
Training Students
Students As Staff
Student / Faculty Partnerships
Students As Academic Entrepreneurs
Identifying Students
Service Scholarship programs: offering scholarship funds to bring students with service experience to campus and then making them key components of service-learning infrastructure
DePaul University’s Steans Center
Bentley’s Service-Learning Scholarship Program
IUPUI’s Sam H. Jones Community Service Scholarship Program
Training Students
Preparation for campus and community work using cascading leadership
Monterey Bay’s Student Leadership in Service Learning program– course and then 4 week summer training
Students as Staff Resource: Federal Work-Study
Created in 1964 as part-time employment for low-income students
Purpose: work for the institution or “work in the public interest” with an academic connection
“Community service” is broadly defined
As of 2000, 7% must be spent on community service positions
National average is 15% (2006)
Federal Work-Study continued
In 2006, FWS supported 128,000 students engaged in service on 3,300 campuses
Students provide direct service (e.g. tutoring, various roles at non-profits)
Students provide coordination (e.g. site liaisons, service-learning assistants, “issue area” coordinators)
FWS Principles of Best Practice
1. Integrate CSWS into the institution’s overall civic engagement mission and programs.
4. Offer a range of community service positions that are challenging, developmentally appropriate, and contribute to the common good.
6. Ensure students receive a thorough orientation, are properly trained for their positions, and have opportunities for reflection and connections to academic study.
www.compact.org/fws
Students as Staff
Lessons from Josh Young, Center for Community Involvement, Miami Dade College
Student Ambassador program
www.mdc.edu/cci
Questions
Time for Questions
Student-Faculty Partnerships
Lessons from Angela VanHorn, Miami University Wilks Scholar www.muohio.edu/wilks
Acting Locally “think tank” in American Studies, 2 years of courses with 23 students and 6 faculty partnering on community engagement projects in SW Ohio
Students as Entrepreneurs: Campus and Community-Based
Students teaching courses, doing engaged research, and creating community partnerships
Lessons from Danyel Addes, former student in University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s UMass Alliance for Community Transformation (UACT) program
Entrepreneurial Use of Work-Study
Students choosing community sites (institution then creates a contract with the site)
Students developing community projects (based on their interest and community partner’s input)
Making Choices
Challenges
Need to be deliberate about trade-offs—Example: challenge of sustainability with
autonomous student model
Unequal power relations: “it is disingenuous to pretend we are all equal”
Faculty ownership of the curriculum
Time it takes for student voice with students’ changing schedules and conflicting demands
Beyond Tactical Service-Learning: Recommendations
Regional student/faculty-staff teams developing the practices
Service Scholarship programs—like sports scholarships
Ongoing training and mentoring
Part of an engaged university
Parker Palmer Quote
The education of the new professional will offer students realtime chances to translate feelings into knowledge and action by questioning and helping to develop the program they are in. I am not imagining a student uprising but rather an academic culture that invites students to find their voices about the program itself, gives them forums for speaking up, rewards rather than penalizes them for doing so, and encourages faculty and administrative responsiveness to student concerns.
- Parker Palmer, 2007
Resources
Students as Colleagues: Expanding the Circle of Service-Learning Leadership
www.compact.org/publications/detail/students_as_colleagues
Earn, Learn, and Serve: Getting the Most from Community Service Federal Work-Study
www.compact.org/fws
Contacts:
Erin Bowley, Erin Bowley & Assoc. LLC, [email protected]
Kevin Michael Days, Corporation for National & Community Service, [email protected]
Nicholas V. Longo, Miami University, [email protected]
Julie Plaut, Campus Compact, [email protected]