Senior leadership at Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore decided to make service-learning the signature pedagogy of the polytechnic and to infuse at least one service-learning module (i.e., course) in every diploma so that all students would have a service-learning experience. Evidence is provided that, in 3 years, the rapid institutionalization of service-learning meets and exceeds all of Furco’s (2002) dimensions for institutionalization at the Quality Building level. In addition, a bold, visionary institutional strategic plan, the Service-Learning Roadmap, is presented that not only achieved this growth, but also extends institutionalization beyond current models. Finally, implications and recommendations are offered to guide institutionalizing service-learning, thereby providing a model for other institutions globally.
As participatory action researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic, we struggle with maintaining meaningful collaboration with our community partners while navigating social distancing guidelines. For the past several years, we have been working with undergraduate women in engineering at a large, public, mid-western research university to assess their experiences on campus and during their co-op rotations in order to influence equitable programming and inclusive practices at our institution. We have been primarily using Group-Level Assessment, a qualitative, participatory research method that is rooted in inclusivity, stakeholder engagement, and instigating actionable change. When our university went remote, we were faced with the challenge of transitioning our community research partnership online and continuing to use our chosen method. The current article compares participant experiences in both an in-person and remote environment, in order to assess the effectiveness of moving our participatory research practices to an online platform. Findings indicated that while both in-person and virtual Group-Level Assessments allowed participants to better understand others’ experiences and allowed their voices to be heard, the in-person method was more engaging. However, the virtual method allowed for more time to do action planning.
The Graduate Student Network (GradSN) brings together emerging scholars who have an interest in research on service-learning and community engagement (SLCE). In this reflective essay, we problematize the relationship between social, cultural, and economic capital and graduate student participation in the GradSN, specifically the GradSN chair role. To begin, we share the origins, process, and initial findings of a collaborative autoethnographic study that involved a group of seven past, present, and incoming chairs. Participation in this study led us to question what barriers exist for graduate student participation in the GradSN, resulting in this reflective essay. Second, we share the critically reflexive practice the three of us engaged in to interrogate our identities in relation to our chair role. Finally, we discuss the concept of full participation as a way to disrupt current structures in the GradSN, concluding with ideas for future inquiry and action.
We herein present a university–community engagement established between the Social Design Integrated Center of the Design School (CIDS/UEMG) at Minas Gerais State University and the Lagoinha Complex community. One day before we started the extension project Como a Palma de Minha Mao (Like the Palm of My Hand), social distancing was decreed in our town due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Three months after the suspension of our actions, we had adapted to all changes imposed by the pandemic and resumed activities. These pandemic challenges us to be open to learning more about and with these communities as we have close contact with them, but how can we promote this engagement remotely? This challenge especially applies to the elderly population that integrates the leading risk group but lacks access to new communication technologies in Brazil.
Spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic and social uprisings against police violence, the Minnesota Youth Sex Trading (MYST) project moved to an entirely virtual format to engage young people who trade sex. Grounded in participatory and action research, we invested in Millennial and Generation Z researchers’ leadership and used marketing principles to create a research-brand for our online presence. As a result, the team garnered new technical skills. More importantly, we developed a novel approach to trust-building, accountability, transparency, and authenticity as we built an online community and increased our reach with marginalized young people. Our work shows that youth culture and social media use during COVID-19 and social uprisings contain valuable insights into young people’s engagement in research. This paper illuminates promising virtual participatory action research principles to engage youth online as experts in prevention, intervention, and wellness promotion, yielding important new insights about the future of engaged research.
This article demonstrates and explains the benefits accruing to communities that involve universities in their local community-based projects. We include concrete arguments intended to stimulate the transfer of the universities’ accumulated knowledge to local (urban) community projects in order to overcome the challenges of contemporary cities. A multiple case study analysis of relevant university–community partnership (UCP) projects in Europe is used to provide evidence for the value of urban community–university partnerships. This article as a whole represents an attempt to bring to light the unexploited but considerable potential of universities, which should extend their focus (metaphorically and physically) outside the purely academic sphere and magnify their capabilities within local university–community partnerships.
Nursing faculty with expertise in community health are well poised to introduce nursing students to the rewarding experience of caring for vulnerable populations. Multiple partnerships have been established over the years within the central Connecticut region that have benefited both the university’s nursing students and the affiliated agency, as well as the individuals served. Utilizing knowledge related to the common health issues faced by the homeless population, faculty worked with community partners to discuss needs and create a plan involving nursing students, which specifically focused on vision and foot health.
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) outreach programs aim to increase participation in STEM fields. However, the impact of these programs is rarely measured due to inherent difficulties in conducting long-term evaluations. This article presents a decadal evaluation of the Science and Engineering Challenge (SEC), an Australian STEM outreach program. From 2006 to 2015, 5,210 high school and 2,445 first-year university students were surveyed to assess whether the SEC influenced their decision to pursue STEM studies. Of the high school physics students, 51.9% reported that the SEC influenced their decision to study physics. A smaller yet significant impact was reported by chemistry (35.2%) and mathematics (32.0%) students. Further, 30.9% of university students indicated that the SEC influenced their decision to pursue a STEM degree. These findings demonstrate that long-term evaluation of outreach program effects is achievable and that outreach programs can indeed have a demonstrable impact on student career choices.
While many science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) outreach programs focus on children, relatively few efforts are dedicated to voting-age populations. These populations are important to reach because misinformation about science is ubiquitous and hard to discern, which harms informed voting on science-related issues. Our program Science with Seniors (SwS) addresses this critical gap by bringing current science research topics and news to the most dedicated voting demographic, senior citizens, through informal science presentations at local senior centers in the greater Chicago area. Through SwS, graduate students and postdoctoral associates have given more than 40 presentations over the last three years on a variety of topics ranging from climate change to gene therapy. Survey responses indicate that SwS has been successful in its aims: 90% agree that the program has increased their understanding of the presented topics and 92% would attend a similar program in the future. Given this positive feedback, SwS demonstrates a way to bring STEM outreach and accessible science knowledge to older voting populations, and a general program development methodology is outlined so that this model can be implemented elsewhere. Future work will focus on expanding the program to more locations, evaluating the long-term effects of this program on comfort with scientific topics, and making these presentations accessible online so that the conversation can continue beyond the program.
An extensive faculty partnership at the University of Connecticut (UConn) that reaches across college and departmental lines is engaged in a project that seeks to enhance, expand, institutionalize, and study a new model for community engagement. The model, called the Environment Corps (E-Corps), combines the familiar elements of classroom instruction, service-learning, and extension outreach to create a method of engagement that aims to benefit students, faculty, surrounding communities, and the university community itself. This article describes the structure and history of E-Corps; details the institutional setting, faculty partnerships, and pedagogical strategies involved; and discusses early evidence of impacts and future prospects.
AbstractThis article outlines a framework that I implemented when delivering a community-engaged course during the earlier days of COVID-19. I argue that these guiding principles—centering the community partners' needs, assessing, and remaining flexible to students' circumstances, and cautiously mapping and selectively using institutional resources to deliver the course—allowed me to provide a community-engaged experience to undergraduate students despite pandemic restrictions. At the same time, I ensured that the intersectional feminist and critical ethos of the class were not compromised and that the commitment to the community partners' sustainability was not cast aside. Additionally, I share two detailed exemplars of community-based learning projects highlighting the possibilities, challenges, and limitations when applying this framework. I close this piece with several points of departure to stimulate future conversation among educators, researchers, and practitioners on the role of community-based service-learning during times of societal crisis.
Community engaged learning is being profoundly impacted by the global pandemic and racial reckoning that defines the COVID-19 reality. In order to best respond to this COVID-19 reality, community engaged scholars and practitioners must draw on the knowledge ways produced by Black and Indigenous thinkers for which the intersection of pandemic and state violence is not new. By addressing the field’s assumptions of time and space and interrogating the accompanying practices of white adventure and the real world dichotomy, scholars and practitioners have the potential to create a community engaged learning praxis that will thrive in the new normal created by the interplay of COVID-19 and the movement for Black lives.
The development of informal science learning programs (ISLPs) is a growing strategy among scientists seeking to engage communities. However, little scholarship exists on higher education ISLPs, limiting best practices for program development. This article explores the perceived impacts for student learners and scientist instructors of an international ISLP focused on marine science, using a mixed-methods approach of questionnaires, interviews, a task-based focus group, and participant observation. Learners perceived an increase in research skills and knowledge, and identified positive impacts associated with networking and forming connections. Learners did not significantly change their attitudes toward marine science or beliefs about careers in science. Instructors felt they helped advance their field and perceived positive impacts from cultural exchange, whereas only a few identified professional development impacts. This study suggests that higher education ISLPs should focus on creating space for different types of connections and increasing how scientists’ participation is valued within the profession.
This article will focus on the implications and creative possibility catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic and reinvigorated racial justice movement on infrastructure that seeks to build transformational community-engaged teaching and research partnerships. Pulling from existing literature around critical service-learning and the wisdom of scholars from the Black, Indigenous, Person of Color (BIPOC) community, it will discuss the ways in which these lasting changes will propel both our institution’s structures for responsible community engagement forward, as well as inform the field’s focus on antiracist community engagement.
The fast-paced advances in technology and scientific knowledge in the 21st century call for learners to possess professional skills that complement their technical skills to make meaningful contributions in communities. This article introduces a cross-disciplinary leadership training program, Graduate Scholars Leadership, Engagement, and Development (GS LEAD), that was designed and implemented to train students in professional skills including problem-solving, interdisciplinary teamwork, leadership, communication, and engagement. This training program provided learning opportunities for incoming graduate students to work beyond their laboratories, across disciplines, and into communities to identify real-world problems and design sustainable solutions. The design and implementation of the program, the findings of participating students’ development in Program Year 1, and suggestions for future program design are discussed.
Despite the significant amount of research published regarding the effect of service-learning on attitudinal measures such as empathy and civic engagement, little is known about how service-learning influences direct student learning outcomes. This pilot study employed a repeated measures, quasi-experimental design with a comparison group to compare cognitive and behavioral learning outcomes of students in two courses: a service-learning public speaking course (n = 84) and a traditionally taught public speaking course (n = 92). No significant differences were revealed between service-learning and non-service-learning students on measures of cognitive learning. However, service-learning student groups significantly outperformed their non-service-learning counterparts on measures of behavioral learning (application/performance of a skill). The article concludes by addressing issues uncovered in this pilot project and offering suggestions for additional research.
The rapid growth of the U.S. Latinx population has led to an increased need for community organizations and academic institutions to develop partnerships focused on addressing gaps in health maintenance and education of Latinx individuals. Medical schools also have a responsibility to educate future physicians in delivering culturally sensitive care through community-oriented learning experiences. This case study approach outlines the logistics of establishing a youth mentoring program between a medical school and a Latinx community and demonstrates the benefits to the institution, medical students, and the population served. We also discuss the challenges arising from this partnership and present early program evaluation data showing consistent mentor satisfaction reported over time. This description of the development of this program provides a framework for creating similar initiatives in medical education to address known disparities in health and well-being of Latinx individuals and other minority populations.
Using a qualitative interview design and the conceptual framework of an engaged campus (Furco, 2010), this article examines the engaged scholarship of contingent academics in a university–community partnership with several professional development schools in the United States. This article highlights some facets that make their engaged scholarship different from traditional scholarship, and the challenges in meeting responsibilities to both the community and university. The purpose of this article is to extend our understanding of community-engaged scholarship and help higher education institution administrators think about policies to support contingent academics participating in other community partnerships.
Sounds of a City: Podcasts and Public Humanities in reflects on the Baltimore Traces: Communities in Transition project, a collaborative teaching endeavor that began in 2015 to document changing Baltimore neighborhoods through student-produced media. The essay provides a definition of public humanities and a discussion of organic methodological innovations that evolved through the process of creating a series of student-produced podcasts focused on listening to a city in a specific moment. Sharing authority and deeply listening to both students and the diverse voices of a city led to the “on the street” interview methodology. Organic methods blending journalism with scholarship, push engaged research into new transdisciplinary territory that centers voices from the street within the university classroom.
