The linked blog post from the Points of Light Foundation may offer a useful case study for student discussions about the need to do critical thinking when considering ways to get involved and support international efforts.

While many well intentioned people enjoy donating items to giving money,  examples are given describing the additional volunteer and storage that items require compared to the usefulness of money. Posts such as these can help facilitate conversations about the need for international organizations to develop trust and communicate their needs. Link: http://www.pointsoflight.org/blog/2015/09/24/how-volunteers-are-helping-refugees-–-and-what-you-can-do

The annual Gulf-South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement through Higher Education will be held on April 13-15, 2016 in Savannah, GA. The deadline for presentation proposals is Oct 30, 2015.

The Gulf-South Summit promotes networking among service-learning practitioners and supports research, reciprocal campus-community partnerships and a culture of engagement in higher education.

The particular focus this year will be on inclusive community development, techniques for dialogue and deliberation as democratic practice, and best practices in student leadership for civic engagement, and community-engaged scholarship.

Please contact the Nashman Center if you have an interest in presenting or co-presenting with other GW colleagues. We would love to support you.

Link for more info: http://www.gulfsouthsummit.org/2016-conference/callforproposals/  

We are thrilled to announce our Center’s new name: The Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service.

Our namesake, Dr. Nashman, is associate professor emerita of sociology and human services. During her 50-year career at GW, she was an early-adopter of service-learning and laid much of the foundation for the University’s current programs. She co-founded the Center itself in 1993.

President Steven Knapp announced to the gathered audience at the annual Freshman Day of Service and Convocation that Dr. Nashman and her husband Alvin E. Nashman have made a major financial donation to the Center. At the event, Dr. Nashman remarked,

“I hope this will expand current programs, help us work more closely with the community and neighbors and make a difference in working toward community development, human rights, social justice and true inclusion.”

For more highlights about the donation, please see this post from GWToday.

We are big fans of Dr. Peter Levine’s blog on civic renewal. His recent blog post, “Missing the Civic Empowerment Messages of a Pope and a President” is a timely way for us to make meaning of the Pope’s coming visit.

“Both the president and the Pope talk explicitly about how we, active citizens, can and must address problems. These two men may have been caricatured as caped superheroes, but they are as clear as one can be that they are not the solutions to our problems; we are.”

Be sure to attend GW Teaching Day. It is a great day for anyone interested in excellent teaching, engaged faculty included. It is free of charge and open to all faculty, however space can be limited so pre-registration is recommended.

• Come find us at the Nashman Center’s table at the Teaching Support Fair
• Attend the “faculty-led session” about indirect/project-based service-learning by Margaret Gonglewski, Anna Helm and Wendy Wagner.

The keynote address will be about engaging students in group-work more effectively. Many of our service or community-based research projects involve student teams, so the topic this year is particularly relevant for our faculty community. The keynoter, Dr. Elizabeth F. Barkley, will also have a special workshop on “Making Group Work Work” at 2pm.

Link to pre-register

Link for more information, including the schedule

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.