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.

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)