BY MEG SULLIVAN
UCLA Today
Kimberlee Cabanne relished the afternoons she spent last quarter
at a senior center in the Fairfax District.
With fellow students from a general education
cluster course on aging, the bubbly freshman led discussion
groups, prepared kosher meals and coaxed elderly Jewish clientele
through exercises.
The students — all gentiles — even
taught themselves “Hava Nagila” as well as comic
Adam Sandler’s delightfully irreverent “Hanukkah
Song” to entertain the group.
“They thought we wrote the (Sandler) song,”
said Cabanne, clearly touched by the seniors’ boundless
adoration.
Spreading goodwill was only one happy by-product
of their weekly visits. Cabanne’s experience exemplifies
a growing trend in the College of Letters and Science to weave
service learning — real-life experiences in the field
— into undergraduate education.
Already, more than 2,000 UCLA undergraduates
each year take courses involving fieldwork. That number is likely
to increase next fall when the College launches the Community
Learning and Service Center, dedicated to this approach.
A yearlong undergraduate honors course, “Frontiers
in Human Aging” became the first freshman cluster course
with a service-learning component two years ago.
For five weeks, the team-taught interdisciplinary
course sends 120 freshmen to agencies serving the elderly. They
conduct in-depth studies of the agencies while interacting with
the clientele.
“The whole point of clusters is getting
freshmen excited about something they may never have contemplated
studying,” said M. Gregory Kendrick, instructional coordinator
for the clusters. “The hands-on approach really appeals
to them.”
This quarter a cluster course on labor and social
justice will begin sending up to 40 freshmen to organizations
dealing with homelessness, affordable housing, welfare reform
and other issues. Organizers are also exploring the possibility
of similarly transforming a popular cluster course on the global
environment.
This new direction is consistent with another
key goal: maximizing the campus’ location on the edge
of a vast urban laboratory.
“There are all kinds of educational opportunities
in the community at large, but most students aren’t going
to be aware of these opportunities unless they’re directed
to them through classes,” Kendrick said.
Service providers enjoy the infusion of enthusiastic
volunteers. And faculty appre-ciate the way in which real-life
experiences teach subtle lessons.
“One of the major hurdles to learning
about aging is ageism,’” said JoAnn Damron-Rodriguez,
adjunct associate professor of social welfare, who teaches the
aging course with Rita B. Effros, professor of pathology and
laboratory medicine, and Lene Levy-Storms, assistant professor
of geriatrics. “In the field, the students see such diversity
and variety of experience that it’s hard for them to retain
any prejudices.”
Students, meanwhile, insist the approach helps
put a human face on class readings and lectures on the social,
biological and public policy implications of aging.
“All of a sudden,” Cabanne said,
“we had a reason to care.”
