Author: lchmara

GW researchers Dr. Emily Morrison and Dr. Wendy Wagner are conducting a study of faculty and invite your participation. They will be exploring the variety of perspectives and experiences that engaged faculty have with community service and scholarship.

Participation in the study will take 20-30 minutes of your time and will be conducted Oct 5-13, including a session immediately following GW’s Teaching Day on Oct 9th. Please contact Dr. Morrison at emily_m@gwu.edu for more information or to volunteer for the study.

The CCPH International Conference will be May 11-14, 2016 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The focus of these discussions on health equity will be social and racial justice. Faculty, community partners, students, funders and policy makers are all welcome to propose and attend.

Session and poster proposals are due Oct 15, 2015  (Find details here)

Link here for more information about the conference. 

The Center for America Progress has released a report calling for more opportunities for students to earn credit through service-learning. This bold proposal suggests students might earn as much as one quarter of their credits in this way (i.e. a full year of service while enrolled in college).

Under their proposal, service-learning programs should be academically rigorous and connected to students’ disciplinary learning. They claim that offering more credit-bearing service-learning opportunities would extend this uniquely transformative learning experience to larger numbers of low-income and non-traditionally aged students who are often not able to participate in extra-curricular service programs and complete their degrees on time.

"Given the importance of service learning, colleges cannot keep treating service as merely an extracurricular add-on."

Link here for more information and to download the full report.

Do Now U is a new pilot project that will engage undergraduates in online discussions about current scientific issues and how to educate the public on science-related issues to benefit the common good. The program is a partnership of The National Center for Science and Civic Engagement (NCSCE) and KQED (an NPR-affiliate in Northern California).

Resources have been created to help faculty incorporate this program into their courses.  Link here to learn more about Do Now U and how to participate.

The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery and Busboys and Poets are co-sponsoring an exhibition on implicit bias, “Seeing the Other: Seeing our Self.” Several GW engaged faculty will be attending speaking events related to the show – to join us contact Wendy Wagner: wagnerw@gwu.edu.

The Council for the Advancement of Standards (CAS) have released the 9th edition of their signature work. Some of GW’s Nashman Center staff were invited participants of the service-learning programs standards review.

Each of 44 functional areas, including service-learning programs, have nicely articulated general standards for practice and accompanying self-assessment guides. The CAS standards can be an incredibly useful place to start your program assessment efforts. Link here for more information.

We continue to be interested in the intersections between civic engagement and the teaching movement connected to engaging students in “big questions.” The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) has reported on an applied example of this through their project, “Student Learning for Civic Capacity: Stimulating Moral, Ethical, and Civic Engagement for Learning that Lasts.” Link here to explore this further.

NPR has recently featured a couple of service-learning related stories that our community of engaged faculty might be interested in.

Healthy Eaters, Strong Minds – about engaging students in community gardens to learn about healthy food.

The story of how Katrina shifted the faculty’s attention to service-learning at Tulane’s Architecture School.

Science for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER) and The National Center for Science and Civic Engagement (NCSCE) are great resources for STEM faculty interested in improving science education by focusing on real world problems.

Their annual meeting and symposium will be held September 27-29 at George Mason University.

More information, including the meeting agenda, is available here. You can register for the meeting here.

Welcome to the start of a new academic year! Here you will find links to important information, events, and resources for those who plan to make indirect or direct service to the community a part of their courses. We support faculty who are engaging students in real world learning through Academic Service-Learning, Community-Based Participatory Research, and those teaching Community Engagement oriented courses. Please contact Maurice Smith smithml@gwu.edu or Amy Cohen abcohen@gwu.edu with questions or concerns about improving or creating real world learning and service opportunities in the curriculum.

Please feel free to share this information with colleagues. To subscribe and receive e-newsletter briefs by email, send a request to gwsl@gwuedu.

Students serving with children or other vulnerable populations and in many nonprofit organizations must be screened and certified in order to be able to serve. Students can complete this screening right here on campus at the Community Partner Fair, Tuesday, September 8th, 3:00pm-5:00pm , Marvin Center, Grand Ballroom

Students should bring:

1. Original copies of their identification (driver’s license, passport, Soc Sec Card)
2. A copy of their TB test results.
3. A copy of most updated physical and immunization records.

Link here for helpful documents to share in your classroom or on your Blackboard sites. Included here are:

• The waiver forms that all students doing service-learning on-site should sign and return to you before service begins
• Risk management tips
• The Individual Placement Form to help you keep track of where students are serving
• A time sheet/evaluation form to collect when students’ service is complete

Please customize these forms as needed to make them a tool that works for your needs.

This year we will be working toward producing an annual magazine, to share the narratives about the work that our campus and community are doing. Our goal is to  deepen the discourse about public service, underscore our shared commitment to community engagement and share important stories from the campus and community.

Academic Community Engagement: A Year in Review willfeature the exemplars of curricular civic engagement—people and projects—as well as articles written by students about their experiences.

This magazine will be on a digital platform and we welcome contributions from faculty, students and community partners. Please keep this in mind as you make your assignments for this academic year and if you or your students would like to contribute, contact us at gwsl@gwu.edu.