Faculty
The Agapé Center’s Department of Service Learning desires to act as a liaison between faculty members and community partners to serve as co-educators to provide holistic learning opportunities for students and to encourage students toward an ethic of discipleship, service and civic engagement.
There are numerous ways in which service learning and community engagement might be integrated into a course. Factors, including the size of the class, community project availability and need, preparation of students and desired learning outcomes of the class, impact the type of service or community engagement that would be ideal for a respective course.
Faculty members might choose to meet a course objective by having the entire class participate in a one-time service project. Arrangements for service projects should be made prior to the semester and should be included in the syllabus. This model is ideal for faculty and peer interaction because a common service experience is shared.
Faculty members may wish to begin service learning and community engagement with a pilot project. In this design, students may have the option to become involved in the community-based project. A portion of the normal coursework is substituted by the community-based component (i.e., a research paper or group project can be replaced with an experiential research paper or personal journal that documents learning from the service experience).
As part of the Experiential Learning Initiative (ELI), all ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ students are expected to complete a minimum of one ELI-approved experience prior to graduation. Service-learning courses which have a minimum of 5 hours of content, 20 hours of service, and 5 hours of reflection outside of the classroom qualify to become an ELI-approved experience, should a faculty member go through the approval process. Â
In this case, all students who participate in an ELI-approved, service learning experience will be involved in service as an integrated aspect of the course. This expectation must be clearly stated in the syllabus with a clear rationale to students as to why the service component is required.
Community engagement offers a means to build upon students’ cumulative knowledge in a specific discipline and to demonstrate the integration of that knowledge with real-life issues. Upper-class students can be challenged to explore ways their disciplinary expertise and competencies translate into addressing community needs. Â
A growing field and opportunity for faculty lies in community based research (CBR). CBR begins with a research topic of practical relevance to the community (as opposed to an individual scholar) and is carried out by students and faculty within the community setting. CBR is collaborative, such that community members and research share the control of the research agenda, design, implementation, and dissemination equally. Such projects are time-consuming and may involve more than one community partner carried over the course of more than one semester. Such projects have a cumulative impact on student learning and community development and may be best suited to course clusters or learning communities across disciplines.
No matter how you choose to integrate service and community engagement into your course(s), the Agapé Center is here to act as a resource, providing logistical support, workshops, grants, publishing and conference opportunities, best practices in reflection, assessment, and more!
For more information, contact Shardé Hardy, Director of Service Learning & Community Engagement at shardy@messiah.edu.