Students as Colleagues: Developing Student Leadership and Building Capacity for Service-Learning

Nicholas Longo & Erin Bowley

April 29, 2008

Arriving Where We Began…

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

- T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Why “Students as Colleagues”

Historical: Cycle of Service-Learning New generation: the Millennials

Instrumental: Students as enablers

Inspirational: Student voice as foundation for Democratic engagement

Better epistemology Good pedagogy

A Brief History of Student Role

1980s: response to “me” generation and creation of COOL and Campus Compact

1990s: institutional resources and academic service-learning

Creation of Corporation for National and Community Service and growth of Campus Compact

Focus on disciplines: Zlotkowski, E., (Series Editor) 1997-2004, Service-Learning in the Disciplines, 20 monograph series

2000s: Engaged university and return to promise of student leadership

2001: Wingspread Conference on Student Civic Engagement leading to New Student Politics

2002: Raise Your Voice campaign launched

2007: Millennials Talk Politics (CIRCLE)

See especially, Goodwin Liu (1996), Origins, evolutions, and progress: Reflections on a movement. Metropolitan Universities: An International Forum 7(1), 25-38.

New Generation

Millennials (born after 1985): more civically engaged, with interest in deliberation and experience doing community service

See especially Longo, N. and Meyer, R., College Students and Politics:

A Literature Review (CIRCLE Working Paper, 2006) www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/WorkingPapers/

WP46LongoMeyer.pdf

Millennials Talk Politics (CIRCLE Report, 2007)www.civicyouth.org/?page_id=250

Instrumental: Students as enablers

Taking service-learning to next level on campuses requires new resources and infrastructure, which are unlikely to come in the form of new staff

Connecting academic and student affairs: development of “whole person”

Inspirational: Democracy, Epistemology, & Pedagogy

Student Voice As Core Component of Civic Engagement

“We declare that it is our responsibility to become an engaged generation with the support of our political leaders, education institutions, and society…The mission of our state higher education institutions should be to educate future citizens about their civic as well as professional duties. We urge our institutions to prioritize and implement civic education in the classroom, in research, and in services to the community.”

- Oklahoma Students’ Civic Engagement Resolution, 2003

www.actionforchange.org/getinformed/student_ink/student_ink-OK.html

Student Voice Leads To New Ways of Knowing and Learning

Promising Practices

Identifying Student Leaders: Scholarship Programs

Training Students

Students As Staff

Student / Faculty Partnerships

Students As Academic Entrepreneurs

Identifying Students

Service Scholarship programs: offering scholarship funds to bring students with service experience to campus and then making them key components of service-learning infrastructure

DePaul University’s Steans Center

Bentley’s Service-Learning Scholarship Program

IUPUI’s Sam H. Jones Community Service Scholarship Program

Training Students

Preparation for campus and community work using cascading leadership

Monterey Bay’s Student Leadership in Service Learning program– course and then 4 week summer training

Students as Staff Resource: Federal Work-Study

Created in 1964 as part-time employment for low-income students

Purpose: work for the institution or “work in the public interest” with an academic connection

“Community service” is broadly defined

As of 2000, 7% must be spent on community service positions

National average is 15% (2006)

Federal Work-Study continued

In 2006, FWS supported 128,000 students engaged in service on 3,300 campuses

Students provide direct service (e.g. tutoring, various roles at non-profits)

Students provide coordination (e.g. site liaisons, service-learning assistants, “issue area” coordinators)

FWS Principles of Best Practice

1. Integrate CSWS into the institution’s overall civic engagement mission and programs.

4. Offer a range of community service positions that are challenging, developmentally appropriate, and contribute to the common good.

6. Ensure students receive a thorough orientation, are properly trained for their positions, and have opportunities for reflection and connections to academic study.

www.compact.org/fws

Students as Staff

Lessons from Josh Young, Center for Community Involvement, Miami Dade College

Student Ambassador program

www.mdc.edu/cci

Questions

Time for Questions

Student-Faculty Partnerships

Lessons from Angela VanHorn, Miami University Wilks Scholar www.muohio.edu/wilks

Acting Locally “think tank” in American Studies, 2 years of courses with 23 students and 6 faculty partnering on community engagement projects in SW Ohio

Students as Entrepreneurs: Campus and Community-Based

Students teaching courses, doing engaged research, and creating community partnerships

Lessons from Danyel Addes, former student in University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s UMass Alliance for Community Transformation (UACT) program

Entrepreneurial Use of Work-Study

Students choosing community sites (institution then creates a contract with the site)

Students developing community projects (based on their interest and community partner’s input)

Making Choices

Challenges

Need to be deliberate about trade-offs—Example: challenge of sustainability with

autonomous student model

Unequal power relations: “it is disingenuous to pretend we are all equal”

Faculty ownership of the curriculum

Time it takes for student voice with students’ changing schedules and conflicting demands

Beyond Tactical Service-Learning: Recommendations

Regional student/faculty-staff teams developing the practices

Service Scholarship programs—like sports scholarships

Ongoing training and mentoring

Part of an engaged university

Parker Palmer Quote

The education of the new professional will offer students realtime chances to translate feelings into knowledge and action by questioning and helping to develop the program they are in. I am not imagining a student uprising but rather an academic culture that invites students to find their voices about the program itself, gives them forums for speaking up, rewards rather than penalizes them for doing so, and encourages faculty and administrative responsiveness to student concerns.

- Parker Palmer, 2007

Resources

Students as Colleagues: Expanding the Circle of Service-Learning Leadership

www.compact.org/publications/detail/students_as_colleagues

Earn, Learn, and Serve: Getting the Most from Community Service Federal Work-Study

www.compact.org/fws

Contacts:

Erin Bowley, Erin Bowley & Assoc. LLC, erin@erinb.org

Kevin Michael Days, Corporation for National & Community Service, kdays@cns.gov

Nicholas V. Longo, Miami University, longonv@muohio.edu

Julie Plaut, Campus Compact, jplaut@compact.org