| Home |
| About WACC |
| Who We Are |
| What We Do |
| What We've Done |
| How To Join |
| How To Support |
| Events & Conferences |
| Publications |
| Newsletter |
| Resources |
| WACC Listserve |
| Contact Us |
|
|
In This Issue:
CONTINUUMS
OF SERVICE CONFERENCE OFFERS STATE-OF-THE-ART
TRAININGS TO SERVICE-LEARNING PRACTITIONERS While service, in its many shapes and forms, has been integrated into education for years, the service-learning field is relatively young. Administrative positions are becoming more institutionalized and professionalized; faculty are slowly being recognized and rewarded for their service-learning work. Students are called to leadership positions on their campuses and in their communities; community partners are gradually being recognized as co-educators for students. These changes do not happen without great effort by dedicated individuals committed to improving education and supporting communities through the use of service-learning. As the service-learning field grows, so does the need for ongoing professional development, training and networking. Washington Campus Compact, as a membership organization, responds to the members’ needs by offering a variety of opportunities for service-learning practitioners. One of our most successful events has been the Continuums of Service service-learning conference. We are fortunate to have in the Campus Compact western region what some participants call “the best service-learning conference in the country, by far!” This conference has succeeded because of its high-quality sessions. Presented by leaders in the field, they are designed for different learning styles and contain the latest "best practices” and models for quality service-learning work. The seventh annual Continuums of Service conference will be held March 10-12 in San Diego, Calif. Informed by the conference theme—Is Higher Education a Public Good? Service-Learning, Civic Engagement and the Public Purposes of Education—the conference offers more than 60 workshops with separate tracks for faculty, students, and community partners. Five outstanding pre-conference workshops offer in-depth information on specific topics:
Service-learning is becoming institutionalized on our higher education campuses and in our communities throughout our state, region and country. Practitioners must continue to help advance the field. I strongly encourage you and your colleagues to take time to advance and reflect on your work by attending the Continuums of Service conference. Furthermore, I urge you to invite faculty, administrators and students from your campus, and key community partners that work with your institution. For more information about our conference and registration, visit our conference website. For information about WACC and our other services, please visit our main website.
WACC PROGRAMS DEMONSTRATE IMPRESSIVE INDICATORS
OF ENGAGEMENT
Campus Connections Program The AmeriCorps team members themselves also participate in community service and national days of service, including Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Around the state, members gathered regionally for "A day on, not a day off!" on Jan. 19. After spending the day serving a home for those with AIDS, collecting books on diversity for children in need, or serving with one of several other projects, team members shared some of their reflections:
May 4 marks an exciting pilot project at Edmonds Community College. Edmonds was selected as the site for a campus/community forum on disaster preparedness and emergency response. Taking shape is a day and evening of guest speakers, training sessions and service-learning students sharing the results of several class projects. More details to come!
Community Connections Program (formerly known as
HELP)
Washington Reading Corps Program
STUDENT/CAMPUS
PROJECTS
International students come to study in the United States for academic learning as well as cultural familiarization. Through IPM, international students have the opportunity to learn more about SFCC and Spokane, as well as other civic activities throughout the community. According to SFCC student Devin Cummins, “Students are encouraged to share ideas and information and discouraged from pressuring one another to adopt the other’s beliefs.” IPM students—both international and American—develop international friendships, improve language skills, gain a greater understanding of another culture and gain a broader worldview. Students meet at least twice a week for both prescribed activities (coordinated by faculty and International Programs staff) and activities of choice. All IPM students come together for the orientation at the beginning of the quarter, mid-quarter meetings, wrap-up activities and their activities of choice. All of these meetings provide opportunities for joint reflection. On average, 42 students enroll in the IPM program each quarter, with priority given to students new to the college and to IPM. When space allows, students may enroll in the program for multiple quarters.
PARTNERSHIP IN PRACTICE: USING WORKSHOPS TO ENHANCE
COLLABORATION
The
Carlson Center Our role within the university is unique. We initiate and sustain relationships with community partners, develop the match between service-learning positions and a particular course’s content and facilitate all the logistics for every service-learning class. Beyond developing and maintaining relationships with both faculty and community partners individually, we also are responsible for bringing them together to collaboratively enhance students’ service-learning. We are, in essence, service-learning brokers. Each quarter, faculty from numerous disciplines across campus elect to integrate service-learning into their courses. Carlson Center staff work closely with course instructors to identify course topics and learning objectives, while working with community organizations to identify their volunteer and community needs. This work has typically occurred in one-on-one meetings between staff and faculty and subsequent one-on-one conversations between Carlson Center staff and community partners. By addressing the particular needs of faculty and community partners on an individual level, we build strong foundational relationships with everyone involved in service-learning.
Workshop Evolution Despite our efforts, we realized over time that something was missing in our pre-quarter meeting model. With the Carlson Center as a catalyst for service-learning at the UW, we had always worked hard to build a strong foundation for partnerships. Although we had hosted various opportunities for conversations between community partners and faculty, we were still struggling to effectively convey faculty perspectives to community partners, and vice versa. In these sessions, community partners and faculty convened, but the two groups had limited opportunities to engage with one another. We recognized that while individual correspondence and an understanding of logistics are fundamental to our work, they do not adequately enhance collaboration between faculty and community partners. Consequently, we expanded our logistics-oriented sessions to include an extended lunch, hoping to change the dynamic of the sessions and also broaden their appeal. We wanted to encourage more—and different—faculty and community partners to join us. In doing so, we saw the audience for our workshops shift to more community partners than faculty attending, and we did see a broader diversity of faculty. However, from our evaluations of that workshop, we discovered that both parties liked the interaction the most. In fact, they wanted more interaction, not just to learn how to fulfill their own needs, but to understand one another’s work in more depth. To infuse our work of promoting public service within the university with increased collaboration, we decided to offer a series of workshops during the academic year with a dual objective: (1) to convey logistical information around service-learning to a wider audience to address concerns and successes together, and (2) to create a time and space in which deeper conversations and collaborations around service-learning could begin, germinate and continue. With this dual objective, our workshop goal is to promote understanding, respect and collaboration among community-based organizations and faculty. To further support the workshop’s content and facilitation, Carlson staff produced two service-learning guides for the 2003-2004 academic year for community partners and faculty, respectively.
New Workshop Model Embraces Reciprocity Faculty and community partners alike consider these questions as they design and guide the service-learning experience, both in the field and in the classroom. Addressing these questions in ways that are fruitful for student learning works best when service experiences are integrated into students’ classroom experiences and when students’ opportunities at organizations meet the organizations’ needs while simultaneously promoting the learning experience. Articulating and sharing this ethic of reciprocity can be a challenge for both community partners and faculty. The purpose of this exercise is to consider service-learning so that the ethic of reciprocity is part of every element of the experience: from developing the course focus to creating an appropriate position, to designing opportunities for students to share their experiences with a wider audience. To more deeply consider the ethic of reciprocity among service-learning constituencies, individuals in the workshop worked in pairs and then as teams. Pairs worked through fundamental service-learning questions from the different perspectives of faculty and community partners. For the purposes of the exercise, we assigned teams a particular course or organization and asked each member to assume the role of who they are not professionally. For example, we asked community partners to serve as faculty to determine a learning objective for the course and to design a brief assignment that integrated students’ experience into the class and its learning objective. Likewise, we asked faculty to assume the community partner role and consider these questions: What are the organization’s goals and what might be some possible organizational needs? How will the opportunities that you develop inform and further the work of the organization? In what specific ways does the opportunity relate to the paired course? Is the opportunity compatible with the quarter system (students working 20 to 40 hours total over eight to nine weeks)? Subsequently, these pairs came together as teams to discuss what they learned about the other’s work, how their perspectives on their roles had shifted and what each could offer the other. In many cases, both community partners and faculty began to realize the complexity and importance of each other’s work and the possible impact on students’ service-learning experiences. This new workshop has drawbacks. The intensive “reciprocity” exercise requires a good deal of time to work through entirely. As a result, less time is devoted to logistics and operational aspects. Another complicating element is that while we have successfully increased participation levels, there is now a greater disparity of service-learning experience among the participants. For some, the partnership exercise is a natural extension of their everyday work; others struggle to understand at a basic level what service-learning is and how it works.
Future Workshop Improvements This dual approach will help community partners and faculty alike progress from a basic understanding of service-learning toward a well-developed, collaborative and practice-oriented understanding as they prepare to either host service-learning students or teach service-learning courses.
March 10-12 - Continuums
of Service Conference
March 10-12
Cost
March 10-12, 2004. The conference theme—Is Higher Education a Public Good? Service-Learning, Civic Engagement, and the Public Purposes of Education—has generated an offering of more than 60 high-quality concurrent sessions and poster sessions. Please join more than 400 colleagues from the Campus Compact western region and beyond to explore multiple perspectives on the relationships between higher education and the public good, and the roles service-learning and civic engagement can play in revitalizing them. Conference participants will include learners and educators from diverse constituencies: faculty; undergraduate and graduate students; government, community agency and organization partners; student development professionals; curriculum specialists; service-learning directors; funding agency representatives and institutional administrators. The conference has become a model for professional development among service-learning practitioners. Washington Campus Compact develops and—in partnership with the California, Hawaii and Oregon campus compacts—presents the conference.
For more information contact: April
22 The Washington Campus Compact executive board will host an all presidents meeting from noon to 3 p.m. immediately following its annual board meeting on April 22. Presidents who are members of WACC are invited and encouraged to attend.
The agenda will focus on fund development for sustaining service-learning and civic engagement efforts on campuses. Panelists representing foundations and government entities will share their perspectives and address presidents’ questions.
Gonzaga University will host both meetings on its campus in the Greenan board room of the Foley Center Library. Lunch will be served.
Presidents will receive a detailed invitation, including a final agenda, by the end of February. Any president unable to attend the meeting is encouraged to send a senior-level administrator as a representative.
Member presidents also are welcome to attend the executive board meeting from 9 a.m. to noon. For more information contact: Washington Campus Compact is proud to present our Dialogue for Democracy event, to be held in Seattle on May 6. We are particularly excited about this event, for it will inaugurate the Dialogue for Democracy series. The series is designed to address questions of pressing relevance to communities and education, such as:
Dialogue for Democracy builds on WACC’s vision of connecting campuses and communities in order to promote vital democracy. The Dialogue process will develop participants’ capacities for collaborative, constructive deliberation in order to address issues critical to connecting education and community. Dr. Ira Harkavy, associate vice president and director of the Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania, will serve as the keynote speaker. Dr. Harkavy, a University of Washington 2003-2004 Walker-Ames lecturer, is a nationally recognized leader in the movement for democratic education.
For more information contact:
|
|||
