Author: lchmara

This time of year, the service-learning listserves and blogs are active with new book and article recommendations. We would like to strike up this conversation at a campus-level, and invite you to share your favorite assigned readings.

As a field that crosses all disciplines, we are always discovering new literature and frameworks that help students more fully understand important issues related to (for example):

• ethical community engagement;
• social inequality;
• the role of citizens in a democracy;
• approaches community engagement (direct service, advocacy, issue research, politics and voting, etc.) and how each leverages social change differently;
• applications of discipline-specific knowledge and skills to one’s civic as well as professional roles;
• how general education goals such as critical thinking, problem solving and communication emerge uniquely as one works in diverse groups toward shared goals

Please use the “comments” space below to share your favorite assigned readings (author, title). The Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service will gather and share these resources to the GW service-learning community on Blackboard.

In their on-going effort to promote ethical community service and fight the sharing of “poverty porn” on social media by otherwise well-meaning volunteers, our colleagues at GlobalSL.org are sponsoring a photography contest.

Entering is easy and open to students, faculty and community partners: post the photo on your instagram account, tagging it with the following:  #globalservice   #ethicalphotography and #GWServes. You can also tag it with the contest category you are entering, such as #mutuallearning.

The contest sponsors have well-articulated guidelines for selecting photos that represent people “truthfully and show dignity, equality, support and integrity… ensuring that those being represented in the images maintain the right to share their story in their own way.”  Share details about the contest with your students and community partners by sending this link: http://globalsl.org/links/global-service-ethical-photography-contest-guidelines/

The service-learning newsfeeds are actively discussing the role of institutions of higher education in addressing the recent events in Baltimore.

Imagining America extended questions for us to all reflect upon and a call to engage in this dialogue further at their annual conference in October – which will be held in Baltimore.  Click herefor recent posts from their blog.  They also have provided suggestions for keeping informed (for example, the UMBC community of faculty, students and alumni are sharing their diverse perspectives on social media using the hashtag #BaltimoreUprising).

Yesterday, Campus Compact posted a bold statement on their blog, regarding higher education’s response to the events in Baltimore.  The post includes a list of action items for institutions of higher education, with implications for faculty, staff, and senior administrators.  Click here for the original post.

Eric Hartman, the editor of one of our favorite blogs, globalsl.org has published an article in International Educator about the role of higher education in fostering meaningful connection across cultures.

Definitely worth your consideration (as is the blog itself if you aren’t already a regular reader), click here for a link to the article.

As we continue to explore the literature on the experiences of service-learning faculty, we have come across another recent article we thought the GW faculty would find interesting.

Harrison, B., Clayton, P. H., & Tilley-Lubbs, G. A. (2014). Troublesome Knowledge, Troubling Experience: An Inquiry into Faculty Learning in Service-Learning. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 20(2), 5.

Click here to link to the article.  (Note: you may need to be logged in to the GW Library system to navigate the link).

The authors encourage faculty to consider applying the scholarship of teaching and learning to our own journey as we learn to facilitate learning through service.  It is based on the theoretical framework of threshold concepts. Threshold concepts are, “those concepts on which a deep understanding of a field of practice and inquiry hinges and which, once understood, open a doorway to otherwise inaccessible ways of thinking.”

The central characteristics of threshold concepts and the three phases of that learning process are applied to the experience of faculty learning to practice service-learning. For example, one possible threshold concept for service-learning faculty is understanding that it is not the service experience, but the reflection and meaning-making on the experience that fosters learning.

What have been the threshold concepts to your learning to practice service-learning? What are the important concepts that opened the door to new ways of thinking about your work as an educator?  How can we use our experiences to mentor other GW faculty?

Given findings in the literature connecting psycho-social wellbeing with community service and other opportunities to engage with the community to make a positive difference, the Center would encourage any faculty or staff interested in exploring those connections to consider applying for funding from Bringing Theory to Practice.  Click here for more info. 

Funding is available for both research projects and hosting seminars/campus discussions about these issues.  Deadlines are August 15, 2015 (for seminar grants) and September 15, 2015 (for research grants). A webinar on these RFPs and logic models is available on the link provided.

Public is a peer-reviewed multimedia e-journal published by Imagining America. Its focus is on the role of humanities, art and design in public life. This issue features continued conversations about the power of story-telling for social change. We encourage you to check it out.

This time of year, we can count on our service-learning listserves conducting a nation-wide discussion of the best books and resources for service-learning and civic engagement. Below are a few of the most compelling submissions we’re seeing.  Please let the Center know if there are any of particular interest to you and we will either invest in our resource library or work with the Gelman Librarians to see that you get a copy in your hands.  Contact Wendy Wagner with those suggestions: wagnerw@gwu.edu.

The Unheard Voices:  Community Organizations and Service Learning by Randy Stoecker and Elizabeth Tryon

World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students by Yong Zhao

Service-Learning in Theory and Practice: The Future of Community Engagement in Higher Education by Dan W. Butin

The Future of Service-Learning: New Solutions for Sustaining and Improving Practice by Jean R. Strait and Mary Lima (Eds).

Toxic Charity by Robert Lupton

Building Playgrounds, Engaging Communities by Marybeth Lima

Social Responsibility and Sustainability:  Multidisciplinary Perspectives Through Service Learning by Virginia Sterling

Coming Full Circle: A Guide to Service-Learning by Joyce Duncan

Transforming Cities and Minds Through the Scholarship of Engagement: Economy, Equity and Environment by L. Hoyt (Ed)

Learning Through Serving by Christine Cress

The Future of Service Learning by Jean Strait and Marybeth Lima

Sentipensante Pedagogy by Laura Rendon

Democratic Professionalism by Albert Dzur

Pushing back the Gates by Harley Ettiene

Social Problems: A Service Learning Approach by Corey Dolgon and Chris Baker

How High Is Up?, by Curtis DeBerg

The Service Learning Companion by Dawn Duncan and Joan Kopperud

Community-based Participatory Research: A Guide to Ethical Principles and Practice

Research on Service Learning (2 volumes) by Patti Clayton, Robert Bringle, and Julie Hatcher (Eds)

International Service Learning by Robert Bringle, Julie Hatcher, and Steven Jones (Eds)

Service-Learning: Engineering in Your Community by Dr. Marybeth Lima

The Center is currently examining the scholarship related to the experience of service-learning faculty.  One piece worth highlighting here is:

Cooper, J. R. (2014). Ten Years in the Trenches: Faculty Perspectives on Sustaining Service-Learning. Journal of Experiential Education, 37(4), 415–428. http://doi.org/10.1177/1053825913513721

Click here for the article itself.  (Note: you may need to be logged in to the GW Library to navigate this link).

This is a qualitative study of service-learning faculty from a variety of disciplinary fields. It examined four themes: why do faculty choose service-learning as a pedagogy; what is their perception of the impact that engagement had on their tenure and promotion process; what have been the rewards and challenges of their experience; and what sustains them in their service-learning work.

As a Center it is our mission to provide ongoing support to service-learning faculty, and to build a community of faculty who can support each other and advocate for ourselves. It is important to ask how we would respond to these questions and what these findings imply about our next steps at GW.

The Spencer Foundation is accepting proposals for small research grants on June 2 and August 20, 2015.  Projects should fit into their strategic initiatives, one of which is “The New Civics” which describes, “an expanded understanding of civic education and its relationship to civic action.”

Huzzah! The entire Winter 2015 issue of Diversity and Democracy is on Publicly Engaged Scholarship and Teaching. This quarterly publication is from the Association of American Colleges & Universities. We encourage you to jump in and enjoy it for yourself.  Click here to link to the full issue.

A few highlights:

• Consider our next steps as a community of engaged faculty at GW:  Creating an Academic Culture that Supports Community-Engaged Scholarship. 
• Critically examine your own practice in engaging ethically with the community:  Why, Who, and How? Strategies for Preventing Paternalism and Promoting Equal Engagement
• Envision GW at the forefront of this movement: Looking Ahead: Envisioning the Next Generation of Civic Work

We are looking forward to more GW conversations about this issue.

The National Education Agency Learning and Leadership grants program provide opportunities for teachers, education support professionals, and higher education faculty and staff to engage in high-quality professional development and lead their colleagues in professional growth.

The grant amount is $2,000 for individuals and $5,000 for groups engaged in collegial study. All $5,000 group grant applicants must include partner information. Deadlines for applications are June 1, and October 15.

Click here for the link.

We are excited to announce this new Academic Service-Learning E-Newsletter by the Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service. GW has a strong community of engaged scholars, who value service-learning and community-based research. We want you to be in the know about the latest research, upcoming conferences, funding opportunities and calls for publications.

Note the links by category on the right column, which will sort for the posts you are looking for. For a chronological list of all posts, click on “home” in the menu bar along the top.

Please share widely with colleagues. To subscribe and receive e-newsletter briefs by email, send a request to gwsl@gwuedu.  We look forward to your feedback and content requests.

Amy Cohen, Maurice Smith, Wendy Wagner
Center for Civic Engagement & Public Service

The first installment of the Spring 2014 Semester Brown Bag Lunch (BBL) Series featured two D.C. non-profit organizations who are going the extra mile to serve, educate, and empower underrepresented  youth. The purpose of the BBL Series is to highlight community partners who can serve as resources to students, faculty, and staff members who are interested in their topic of expertise. Attendees of the first BBL included people who have previously volunteered for Reading Partners (one of the organizations that presented), students who work with JumpStart or similar organizations, and those who simply wanted to hear more about service organizations that they didn’t know much about.

Life Pieces to Masterpieces (LPTM) is one such community organization whose main goal is to transform the lives of young men from some of the most challenging communities in D.C. Working with educators, social workers, and child advocates from 12 different schools in the D.C. area, LPTM staff identify boys to enroll into the program on a consistent basis. With the desire to help these young men find the courage to go onto college, increase their confidence, and provide these individuals with the recourses needed to access the larger world, LPTM Mentors and Volunteers utilize art as a processing mechanism to assist others in discovering their own unique voices. By creating and invoking an environment for youth to better understand their power, and teaching that despite the fact that one cannot control their situation, one can control their thoughts, words, and actions, LPTM has had tremendous success. With a current 100% graduation rate, LPTM’s intentional environment, mission-driven focus, and well-trained Mentors and Volunteers are consistently reinforcing LPTM values and in turn impacting a great number of DC youth.

Like LPTM, Reading Partners is another D.C. non-profit organization whose goal is to combat the striking discrepancies amongst the literacy rates of children enrolled in Title 1 schools in the District. Collaborating with school guidance counselors, social workers, and teachers, Reading Partners aims to find and enroll students who are six months to two years off the reading track into their literacy program. With the knowledge that only 13% of low income fourth graders are reading at grade-level and students are four times more likely to drop out of high school if they are behind in reading in third grade, Reading Partners uses a structured curriculum that is based on the students’ identified literacy needs and learning strategies to combat these statistics. Pairing students up one-on-one with a literacy tutor, Reading Partners in this past year alone had 99% of its students increase their rate of learning and the organization as whole note that students on-average learn and retain three times as much information in comparison to other students in a typical school day. While challenges such as student behavior and increased enrollment size are becoming progressively more apparent, Reading Partners has continued to help students become strong, confident readers with a passion for learning.

The result of the representatives’ presentations was positive and engaging; almost all attendees had at least one question or comment for the speakers, some statistical and some personal. The speakers were all clearly knowledgeable passionate about the paths of public service that they had chosen, and they upheld The Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service’s mission to help connect students to opportunities to serve and to promote active citizenship in our diverse democracy. From the approaches utilized by Life Pieces to Masterpieces and Reading Partners to assist students in finding their own confidence and voice, we – GW faculty, students, and affiliated community members – can all learn from these organizations in order to continue to have a greater role on impacting the lives of today’s youth.