Business Writing & Community Partnerships:

It’s about Change

Jim Dubinsky English Department

Virginia Tech

Kim Kirk Town of Blacksburg Planning & Engineering Office

Association for Business CommunicationAnnual Conference, Cincinnati, OH

October 23-26, 2002

Who we are Kim Kirk

Coordinator Neighborhood Enhancement Program Town of Blacksburg’s Planning & Engineering OfficeBlacksburg, VA 24060http://www.blacksburg.gov/services/planning/neighborhood_enhancement.php

540. 961-1126 / KKirk@blacksburg.gov Jim Dubinsky

Director of Professional Writing ProgramDepartment of EnglishVirginia TechBlacksburg, VA 24061-0112http://www.english.vt.edu/~dubinsky/540.231-7909 / dubinsky@vt.edu

What we did & how we did it What?

Semester-long, Service-Learning Partnership How?

Before term: Met to discuss goals, develop projects, and discuss deadlines/schedules

During term: Introduce project to class, work with students, share notes and evaluations, present material, revise & edit material

Student tasks: Informal Proposal, Progress Report, Oral Presentations, Final Written Project

After term: Refine products, discuss results, and use products and what we learned

Why we did it Kim

Address local government’s responsibility to reach out to citizens (including 4-5,000 transient students)

Gave access to student perspective Additional resources (in terms of experience, labor, and

talent) Jim

Belief in service-learning’s pedagogical value Belief in fulfilling land grant’s civic mission & introducing

students to the concept of civic duty Teach students the importance of deadlines Gain another perspective on my students’ work & my class

Importance of Partnership Partnership changes dynamics of relationship,

increases accountability, & expands potential for learning

Kim’s previous experiences with interns Student labor but no faculty involvement Issue of accountability

Jim’s early ventures in service-learning Client projects or service-learning Balancing number of projects with goals of pedagogy

Student’s Perspectives “ The service-learning project exposed us to what really goes

into developing professional documents. . . . We learned . . . more than any lecture [could present].”

“Before our group began this project, none of us knew that the [NEP] existed. We now know it does, have helped Kim do her job, and, more importantly, have helped countless tenants (particularly students) in single-family homes.”

“There is definitely a place for academic service-learning; our class played a pivotal role in helping us learn group skills. We applied the material in the class, using our different backgrounds, and . . . channel[ed] our diversity towards the community project to achieve a goal that benefits everyone involved: all of us, Kim, and our fellow students who live in town.”

Overall Benefits: Effect “Change”

PersonalPedagogicalPoliticalProfessional

Immediate ImpactTown

Outreach (student outreach to effect change in government’s ability to reach out)

Valuable input for town government from students

Valuable input for students about town government and its services / roles

Use of materials in presentations

Long-term Impact Boundary between town and gown dissolves Feedback and suggestions on methods for Town to

communicate with students living “in town” On leading edge of movement to help community

regain trust of student population Products and their potential value

Survey, brochures, information sheets, newsletter Establish models for partnerships at many levels Addresses notion that courses with strong practical

components are “market-driven” or, worse, simply “vocational”