Service learning expanding on campus,
in U.S.
BY MARINA DUNDJERSKI
UCLA Today Staff
As the service-learning movement takes off nationally, UCLA coordinators
are predicting that more than 3,000 students on campus will participate
this year — an increase of 50%.
“Service learning is gaining steam because we’re looking
at how an undergraduate education can combine both theory and practice,
both rigor and relevance,” said Kathy O’Byrne, director of
UCLA’s Center for Experiential Education and Service Learning (CEESL).
“It’s become part of a national conversation on how we can
transform undergraduate education to better prepare students for either
graduate school or the world of work.”
During this time of nationwide expansion, UCLA is emerging as a model
for other campuses and groups looking to improve or expand their service-learning
programs — those in which students’ participation in organized
community service is integrated with academic curriculum.
Earlier this year, UCLA received a grant from California Compact —
the state’s leading organization of service learning — that
named UCLA as one of four regional centers statewide for the study, promotion
and documentation of student civic engagement. As such, UCLA will coordinate
a plan for integrating service-learning activities on college campuses
in the greater Los Angeles area.
CEESL serves as the home base for all undergraduates across the campus
interested in service learning, internships and community-based research,
including the AmeriCorps programs. The center works in conjunction with
the Center for Community Partnerships, the Academic Advancement Program
and the UCLA College, among others.
CEESL, which four years ago was known as Field Studies, had 35 service-learning
courses and 98 faculty working with it last year. As interest piques,
O’Byrne believes those numbers will rise this year. The College
is also trying to boost the number of service-learning activities in its
General Education Clusters program.
It’s important for faculty to know there is a rigorous academic
component for the students involved in service learning, O’Byrne
emphasized.
“This is not giving away units for simply going into the community
and doing things,” O’Byrne said. “This is a pedagogy.
It’s highly structured, with a lot of care and pre-planning that
goes into what students will do with faculty involvement.”
Another element that sets UCLA’s program apart is the push to
include research as a component of service learning. Community-service
partners benefit from surveys and other research by undergraduates they
might not otherwise afford, while students learn from doing research under
the close supervision of faculty.
UCLA students volunteering at the Korean Resource Center, for example,
researched rates at which fishermen caught and consumed contaminated fish
and then alerted owners of local fish markets to the dangers. Students
working at the Filipino Workers’ Center researched the home health-care
industry, a primary source of employment for this immigrant group. And
students at the Youth Policy Institute researched the effects of a computer
training program on Latino families in Pacoima.
But, turning the question around, how do service-learning projects affect
participants? The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA’s
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies has received a
$798,000 grant from Atlantic Philanthropies (USA) Inc. to study how service
learning affects students after college and to assess faculty’s
role in service learning. The grant extends research the institute has
conducted since the early 1990s.
Previous research done by the institute has revealed a positive impact,
said Lori Vogelgesang, director of its Center for Service Learning Research
and Dissemination. Students learn critical thinking skills, develop a
commitment to activism and want to volunteer after college, according
to the findings.
In this new study, researchers will survey faculty about their attitudes
toward service learning as well as their teaching methods — there
are currently almost no data on national trends. For faculty who think
service learning might not work with their courses, O’Byrne offers
this advice: “You show me your syllabus, and I can give you a list
of community organizations where your students can apply the theory, see
that concept in action and actually do meaningful work.”
For more information, go to: www.oid.ucla.edu/ceesl. |
