Community Involvement

Faculty

Congratulations Dr. Mary McKinney - 2007 Texas Campus Compact Faculty Fellow

  

Ready to include Service-Learning as part of your class? Contact Dr. Rosangela Boyd.

 

 

bulletMission and Vision

To foster social responsibility and learning through community engagement, and service-learning at TCU. We provide and support opportunities which prepare students and inspire them to be engaged citizens and global leaders working to create a more just world.
bulletBenefits of Service-Learning

Service-learning programs enhance the overall quality of education by:

  • encouraging meaningful faculty and student engagement in community issues;
  • increasing faculty-student contact with an emphasis on student-oriented teaching;
  • intentionally developing civic responsibility in students;
  • making students aware of current societal issues as they relate to their academic field;
  • identifying areas for research and publication related to current trends and issues;
  • focusing on short-term and long-term solutions to pressing community needs;
  • increasing student and faculty retention;
  • developing positive university-community relationships; and
  • facilitating opportunities to extend university knowledge and resources.
bulletPrinciples for Ethical and Effective Service

Created by the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University

1. Reciprocity through Partnership

  • Develops collaborative and sustainable relationships with community partners and recognizes their role as co-educators of student participants.
  • Involves potential community participants in the design of a service-learning course in order to provide both learning for the students and service of value to the recipient (individual, group, or organization).
  • Provides ongoing opportunities for feedback from community partners and works with the same community partners over multiple iterations of the course as much as possible.

2. Humility

  • Encourages students to serve with an attitude of listening and learning from community participants as part of the process of getting things done in a service-learning situation.
  • Offers diverse and ongoing opportunities for students to discuss, reflect upon, and evaluate their actions and roles in their community placements.
  • Prepares students to view the administrative and clerical work that they may be asked to do at their service placements as a valuable learning opportunity. 

3. Respect for Diversity

  • Integrates into the course work means by which students can develop respectful relationships across differences, including, but not limited to, racial, ethnic, cultural, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, educational experience, and language differences.
  • Creates an atmosphere in the classroom that models respect for diversity.
  • Engages students in discussion and training on issues of diversity.
  • Encourages collaboration among diverse campus-community groups.
  • Offers service opportunities that reflect the diversity of the larger community.

4. Commitment

  • Models and emphasizes to students the importance of keeping commitments made to community partners.
  • Provides feedback mechanisms for accountability to community partner s (e. g. a contact person at TCU who community partners know they can contact, final evaluations for students with their internship supervisors).
  • Clarifies the academic schedule and time frame of community placements and considers offering students the opportunity to work in their placements for more than one semester.

5. Ongoing Communication and Clear Expectations

  • Provides a structured experience that encourages safe, comfortable channels of communication and sets clear expectations among student, supervisor and faculty or Teaching Assistant.
  • Arranges student service placements through a process of asking organizations about their needs and preferences for interns, and matching students accordingly.
  • Provides a learning agreement at the beginning of the course, so that students and placement organizations are clear about their mutual goals and expectations.

6. Preparation

  • Prepares students for community placements with the attitudes, skills, and knowledge they will need to serve ethically and effectively.
  • Involves community partners in designing and providing preparation whenever possible.
  • Provides students with current and historical information about their placement organizations and the communities the organizations work with before beginning their
    internships.

7. Context

  • Assists students in connecting specific service-learning experiences with the larger contemporary and historical political, economic, and social context in which the service experiences are embedded.
  • Involves knowledgeable community members and utilizes other available materials to present key issues specific to the communities and organizations in which students are placed.

8. Participatory Pedagogy

  • Engages all participants (students, faculty, community participants) as teachers and learners.
  • Provides students with opportunities to share new knowledge obtained from their service experiences.
  • Offers classroom structures that support the self-directed learning role that students often take during internships.

9. Safety

  • Anticipates and takes precautionary steps to ensure the safety of all people involved in service-learning activities.
  • Complies with special safety or liability requirements of community partners (e.g. finger printing, copy of driver’s license)
bulletResources for Teaching, Research and Learning

Individual Consultation with Service-Learning Professional Staff
The Center staff is available to meet with faculty and staff who are interested in developing a service-learning course, community-based research project, or to integrate service-learning into an existing program or course.

Service-Learning Placements
The Center staff supports faculty and staff by arranging community placements for students.  Contact us at least one semester in advance to begin the process.

Service-Learning Resource Library
The Center houses a library of books, articles and journals on service-learning.  Faculty can check out these recourses.

Links To Community Agencies And Relevant Needs In The Community

The Center staff can provide you with current data on Tarrant County and the City of Fort Worth.  In addition, the staff can assist you in finding local organizations that focus on the issues related to coursework.

Service-Learning Course Development Grants

The Center for Teaching Excellence has partnered with the Center for Community Involvement and Service-Learning to offer grants which support academic efforts which support public service at large.  Funds are available for individual faculty and academic units seeking to initiate or build upon existing service-learning and community-based research efforts. Service Learning Course Development Grants support expenses associated with adding a service component to a new or existing academic course. 

Service-Learning Workshops

In partnership with the Center for Teaching Excellence, the Center sponsors two workshops per year focusing on the best practices for implementing and assessing service-learning methods.

Promotion of academic service-learning opportunities to TCU students

The Center promotes service-learning and other academic opportunities to TCU students at large through a list-serve, wide student network, and the website.
bulletIntegrating Service-Learning into Your Course (5 Methods)

The Center has identified 5 approaches for connecting service to a course:

1.  Courses with a Public Service Component
These courses feature a service project as a course requirement. Students may be placed at a particular agency, students may complete a project meeting the need of a community agency, or students may research a topic with the intent of informing a particular community agency/group of their findings.

2.  Courses that Focus On Pubic Service
The subject matter of the course is public service.

3.  Courses that Prepare Students for Public Service
These courses provide students with the requite academic skill and related preparation for public service fieldwork and internships.

4.  Departmental internships
Internships in the community that enable students to focus on public service.

5.  Individual Directed Readings
The subject matter of the readings is public service and preparing students for community involvement.
bulletService-Learning Library

The following titles are available in the Community Involvement Library:

Click Here to see the complete list of resources available.

  • Introduction to Service-Learning Toolkit: Readings and Resources for Faculty (Second Edition, Campus Compact). Up-to-date writing and resources on service-learning, from learning theory and pedagogy to practical guidance on how to implement service-learning in the classroom.
  • Service-Learning in the Disciplines. This series of books published by the American Association of Higher Education presents articles and research on service-learning from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
  • Fundamentals of Service-Learning Course Construction (Campus Compact, 2001). A hands-on resource with practical guidance to assist faculty in designing, developing, and constructing service-learning courses.
  • A Practitioner’s Guide to Reflection in Service Learning (Vanderbilt University, 1996). Theoretical and practical perspectives on using reflection in service-learning.
  • The Engaged Department Toolkit (Campus Compact, 2003). This handbook is designed to help departments develop strategies for including community-based work in their teaching and scholarship, making community-based experiences a standard expectation for majors, and encouraging civic engagement and progressive change at the departmental level.
  • Where’s the Learning in Service-Learning (Jossey-Bass, 1999). Provides an overview of where, when, and how learning takes place in service-learning.

Stop by the Student Center room 220 to check out or view any of the resources.
bulletFaculty Links
  • Campus Compact - http://www.compact.org/

    TCU is a member of Campus Compact which is a national coalition of more than 950 college and university presidents - representing some 5 million students - dedicated to promoting community service, civic engagement, and service-learning in higher education.   Go to service-learning under resources to find service-learning syllabi, new publications, promotion and tenure resources, and more.

  • The National Service-Learning Clearinghouse - http://www.servicelearning.org/

    The National Service-Learning Clearinghouse (NSLC), a program of Learn and Serve America, operates America's premier website supporting the service-learning efforts of schools, higher education institutions, communities, and tribal nations. Go to resources to find information on effective practices, hot topics, funding sources, toolkits on responding to national disasters, lesson plans and syllabi, and much more.
bulletService-Learning Bibliography

What is Service-Learning?

Bringle, R.G., Games, R. & Malloy, E. A. (Eds.) (1999). Colleges and Universities as Citizens. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Burns, L. T. (Oct. 1998). Make sure it's service learning, not just community service. The Education Digest, 38-41.

Giles, D. E., Eyler, J., Stenso, C. & Gray, C. J.  (2000).  At A Glance: What we know about the effects of service-learning on college students, faculty, institutions, and communities. 1993-2000, Third Edition.

Jacoby, B. and Associates. (1996). Service-Learning in Higher Education: Concepts and practices. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Stanton, T. K., Giles, D. E. & Cruz, N. I. (1999). Service-Learning: A Movement's Pioneers Reflect on Its Origins, Practice, and Future. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Developing and Planning the Curriculum

Howard, J. (Ed.) (1993). A Faculty Casebook on Community Service-Learning. Ann Arbor: OSCL Press.

Rhodes & J. P. F. Howard (Eds.). Academic Service Learning: A Pedagogy of Action and Reflection (pp. 21-29). New Directions for Teaching and Learning, No. 73. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Hutchings, P. & Wutzdorff, A. (1988). Experiential learning across the curriculum: Assumptions and principles. In P. Hutchings and A. Wutzdorff (Eds.). Knowing and doing: Learning through experience. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, No. 35. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

McCarthy, A. M. & Tucker, M. L. (Oct. 1999). Student attitudes toward service-learning: Implications for implementation. Journal of Management Education, 554-573.

Working with the Community

Arches, J., Darlington-Hope, M., Gerson, J., Gibson, J., Habana-Hafner, S. & Kiang, P. (Jan./Feb. 1997). New voices in university-community transformation. Change, 29 (1), 36-44.

Holland, B. & Gelmon, S. (October 1998). The state of the engaged campus: What have we learned about building and sustaining university and community partnerships? AAHE Bulletin.

Gelmon, S., Holland, B., Seifer, S., Shinnamon, A. & Connors, K. (Fall 1998). Community-university partnership for mutual learning. Michigan Journal for Community Service Learning, 5, 97-107.

Kretzman, J. P. & McKnight, J. L. (1993). Building communities from the inside out: A path toward finding and mobilizing a community’s assets. Chicago: ACTA Publications.

Shorr, L. (1997). Common purpose: Strengthening families and neighborhoods to rebuild America. New York: Anchor Books Doubleday.

Reflective Learning

Albert, G. (Ed.) (1994). Service-learning reader: Reflections and perspectives on service. Raleigh, NC: National Society for Experiential Education.

Barber, B. R. & Battistoni, R. M. (1993). Education for democracy. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing.

Eyler, J., Giles, Jr., D.E. & Schmiede, A. (1996). A practitioner’s guide to reflection in service learning: Student voices and reflections. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University.

King, P. M. & Kitchner, K. S. (1994). Developing reflective judgment: Understanding and promoting intellectual growth and critical thinking in adolescents and adults. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Silcox, H. C. (1993). A how to guide to reflection: Adding cognitive learning to community service programs. Holland, PA: Brighton Press.

Williams, D. & Driscoll, A. (Spring 1997). Connecting curriculum content with community service: Guidelines for student reflection. Journal of Public Service and Outreach, 2 (1), 33-42.

Assessing Students and Evaluating Service Learning

Cohen, J & Kinsey, D. (1994). Doing good and scholarship: A service learning study. Journalism Educator, 48 (4), 4-14.

Driscoll, A., Gelmon, S., Holland, B., Kerrigan, S., Longley, M. J. & Spring, A. (1997). Assessing the impact of service learning: A workbook of strategies and methods. Portland, OR: Portland State University.

Driscoll, A., Holland, B., Gelmon, S. & Kerrigan, S. (Fall 1996). An assessment model for service-learning: Comprehensive case studies of impact on faculty, students, community, and institution. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 5, 66-71.

Eyler, J. & Giles, D. E. (1999). Where's the learning in service-learning? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Myers-Lipton, S. J. (1996). Effect of service-learning on college students' attitudes toward international understanding. Journal of College Student Development, 37 (6), 659-668.

Troppe, M. (Ed.) (1995). Connecting cognition and action: Evaluation of student performance in service learning courses. Providence: ECS/Campus Compact.