Building an Extended Community of Service Learners

PRINCIPAL MENTOR:

Timothy Stanton, Haas Center for Public Service

ADAPTERS:

California State University-Monterey Bay, Mills College, Portland State University

The Innovation

Since the founding of Campus Compact more than 15 years ago, service learning has become a familiar feature of undergraduate education. Stanford, whose former president Donald Kennedy was one of Campus Compact's three founders, has been a leader in this work, with many of the university's programs emanating from the endowed Haas Center for Public Service.

Service learning is distinguished from other types of experiential learning by its special concern that students develop habits of community service as part of their undergraduate education. Unlike internships or cooperative education, service learning does not seek to contribute to students' career development (although it may) but rather to draw students' attention to the nature and obligations of living in a democratic society made up of many different kinds of people. Service learning proceeds from volunteerism but puts that impulse within specific intellectual, often academic contexts. While student affairs offices have been the locus of volunteer activities and are the organizers of much service learning activity, academic, credit-granting programs have increasingly adopted service learning as a required aspect of courses or as the focus of whole field-based learning experiences. Stanford has been successful in finding ways to incorporate service learning into the intellectual traditions of the university in a wide range of departments, including opportunities to use service learning experiences as the basis for student research.

Outcomes

Service learning differs from other innovations in "Disseminating Proven Reforms" in that it is not a defined and specific program. Rather, it encompasses a wide range of activities and takes many forms, depending on institutional context. Unlike, say, Supplemental Instruction (Anne Arundel) or Workshop Physics (Dickinson), service learning is not a single structure and set of procedures but rather a commitment to particular principles and emphases in undergraduate education, accompanied by a range of pedagogies that are still developing and expanding. Therefore, the participants in this cluster did not expect to take specific activities that are successful at Stanford and adapt them but rather to use Stanford's longer experience and pedagogical principles to guide their diverse programs. The group adopted a "co-mentoring" model of dissemination whereby each of the participants brought its particular experiences to the table for the benefit of the others.

Rather than Stanford mentors hosting conferences and visiting each of the adapters in turn, the group met quarterly during the two years of the project, rotating the meetings among the partner campuses. The host campus was responsible for organizing a two-day program on a mutually agreed theme that evolved into a "curriculum" for the participants. Topics for the meetings included assessment, embedding service learning in the curriculum, community partnerships, faculty scholarship, and institutional culture.

At project's end, the four campuses that made up this cluster were in quite different situations with regard to service learning. Stanford, with the most mature program, continued efforts to develop new programs and to extend existing ones into new departments, thus increasing both faculty and student participation. California State University, Monterey Bay, created two years earlier with service learning as a defining feature of its mission, was in the process of determining just how that mission would translate into curriculum and pedagogy. Mills College, a small liberal arts institution, was just beginning a serious effort at service learning. During the project period, loss of internal funding for service learning and instability in program leadership substantially retarded efforts. A recent large grant to expand the multicultural aspects of the curriculum includes creation of 40 new service learning courses.

Portland State recently reorganized itself and its curriculum to focus on its relationship to its urban community. Service learning is a requirement for sophomores and, as a general education capstone experience, for seniors as well.

In summary, the two independent institutions are seeking to expand their activities within an established structure, one with stable leadership and substantial funding, the other with fluctuating funding and changing program administration. The two public institutions, one newly created and the other significantly transformed, have made service learning a defining focus.

The participants felt that individually and collectively they had made progress in the following areas: deepening practice and developing the field, creating a professional community, further validating and legitimizing service learning on campus, encouraging and strengthening continuous assessment of service learning, developing a renewed focus on and an understanding of students engaged in service learning, recognizing the importance of institutional context in the process of institutionalizing service learning, and developing new strategies for research and assessment.

It is difficult to cite concrete examples of these accomplishments, although many of them were visible in the context of the rich conversations at the quarterly meetings. For the most part, the outcomes are expanded knowledge and awareness resulting in improved program content and process at the member institutions. The group members, all leading administrators of service learning programs at their institutions, provided samples of the direct experience of service learning participants and some unusually sophisticated reflections on the programs. This is a model of mutual mentoring through intense, structured conversation carried on for an extended period of time.

Assessment

Each of the institutions assessed their progress in terms of a set of "indicators" developed throughout the project. Some of these indicators, such as assessment efforts, program sustainability, and embedded service learning, were used by all the campuses. Some individual participants added their own, such as formation of community partnerships and faculty scholarship. In the final report, each campus listed specific examples of progress for each of the indicators. The structure of the partnership as a whole and specific areas of progress were examined, described and commented on by an external evaluator, who attempted to estimate the project's effects on the partners. The evaluation emphasized strategies and improved practice as opposed to numbers of new courses, because three of the four institutions already were carrying out large service learning programs.

The participants also developed a joint research project in each institution and interviewed students who had participated in various kinds of service learning activity. From these interviews they are developing portraits of typical students to serve as benchmarks in assessing the effects of their programs.

Available Information

For further information, contact:

Timothy Stanton
Haas Center for Public Service
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-8620
Telephone: 415-723-2859

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