Deepening Community Engagement in Higher Education

Forging New Pathways

A. Hoy, M. Johnson, A. Hoy, M. Johnson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137319913
• eBook ISBN: 9781137315984
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

This volume argues for reexamination of the field of community engagement, suggests that the most effective way forward requires rethinking the structures of traditional higher education, and points to the growing emergence of evidence-based best practices that can catalyze a renaissance in community engagement and in higher education.

PART I

Students as Civic-Minded Professionals: An Approach for Student Development

CHAPTER 1

Learning through Service: Structures that Promote Student Leadership

Ashley Cochrane and Heather McNew Schill

Introduction

As the civic engagement movement in higher education has matured and evolved, many have advocated for increased opportunities for student leadership and voice. Longo and Gibson (2011) explore models of “new” approaches to leadership development in higher education, approaches that integrate civic engagement activities, practical applications, and student initiatives. Zlotkowski, Longo, and Williams (2006) call for the academic service-learning movement, in particular, to incorporate more opportunities for student direction and influence. These, and other recently published books and journal articles, feature dozens of civic engagement programs at colleges and universities that are providing students with opportunities to serve, learn, and lead. Many of the strongest programs have developed organizational structures that draw upon and make the most of the unique characteristics of their institution, their community, and their student body.

There is no “one-size fits all” answer for how students can most effectively serve, learn, and develop as leaders. Just as each of our institutions varies in geographic setting, cultural priorities, student demographics, size, mission, and history, so our community service and service-learning programs must reflect those differences. We believe that the context in which these programs exist should influence how the programs are structured and implemented.

At the same time there are organizational strategies that have proven effective in a variety of institutions; we contend that awareness of those strategies and a willingness to adapt them to fit the unique aspects of our own institutions will lead to strong programs that effectively integrate student service, learning, and leadership development. In this chapter, we share strategies that have proven successful in developing students as “service-oriented leaders for Appalachia and beyond” at Berea College for many years. The strategies that we explore here include adopting a mission-driven basis for community-engaged work, making connections between curricular and cocurricular service, and utilizing elements of the Coalition of Projects model as an organizational framework. We have found that by implementing these approaches in a way that fits our particular organizational culture, our center provides developmental opportunities that allow students to learn and thrive as they serve and lead. Additionally, these approaches characterize the Bonner Program’s model for student development, implemented by more than 60 colleges and universities.

Living the Mission

Most institutions of higher education can identify historical roots of service and mission statements that ground themselves in work for the common good or service to the surrounding community. Connecting our community-based work to the institutional mission has been a way to embody what Kuh et al. (2010) call “living missions.” This means that an institution organizes and utilizes resources “in a manner that enables it to realize its aspirations” (27). Centers for community engagement provide students with opportunities to use their skills to achieve the institution’s highest goals. In addition, Kuh and others (2008) state that daily use of institution-particular, mission-based language can help students connect to the institution and ultimately succeed in their undergraduate careers.

Berea College’s history, mission, student population, and labor program together compose a compelling institutional model. Founded in 1855 by abolitionists, Berea College was the first interracial and coeducational college in the Southern United States. From its beginning, Berea College has had a nonsectarian and unaffiliated Christian perspective and was designed to serve African-American and Appalachian students who would not have otherwise been able to pursue educational opportunities. The College continues to be guided by these founding commitments. Today, each Berea College student receives a full-tuition scholarship and must meet financial need requirements to be admitted. The College’s motto, “God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth,” is prominently used in Berea College publications, communications, and daily conversations on campus. The College’s Eight Great Commitments, which serve as the mission statement of Berea College, are frequently referenced; three of the Commitments explicitly mention service.

Berea College is a mission-focused institution, one that prides itself on its unique history, current vision, and student accomplishments. The roots of the most recent incarnations of service programs are found in the late 1960s, a time influenced by the War on Poverty, the development of the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) programs, and a national spotlight on poverty in the Appalachian region. In 2000, the Center for Excellence in Learning through Service (CELTS) was founded. It was designed to bring under one umbrella the various community service programs previously housed in several locations, and to establish a formal academic service-learning program. The vision for CELTS grew from the College’s strategic plan, which articulates Berea College’s commitment to develop “service-oriented leaders for Appalachia and beyond.” Today, CELTS’s three main program areas are community service, service-learning, and the Bonner Scholars Program.

Berea College’s history and mission have provided a language rooted in service, in the Appalachian region, and in student development, which we use in our communication tools and our daily work. For example, the CELTS Shared Values hang in the students’ common workspace and appear on students’ position descriptions; the Shared Values were written by students and staff of our predecessor program, Students for Appalachia, almost 20 years ago. Using this language ties the present-day work of CELTS to our history and “living mission,” and allows us to draw connections with the evolving vocabulary of this field of work in higher education, currently the language of civic engagement, place-based service, and high-impact practices.

Creating Connections

In the Campus Compact publication, Looking In, Reaching Out, Barbara Jacoby encourages service-learning practitioners to “make the most of your place in the organization” (Jacoby and Mustascio, 2010, 42) and to build partnerships in their own area, as well as in other areas across campus. This practical advice implies the necessity of understanding an institution’s organizational structure and a program’s place within it. This understanding can be the basis for building relationships and alliances and for potentially bridging gaps that could otherwise be impediments.

CELTS houses both curricular and cocurricular services and reports to the Office of the Academic Vice President. Our reporting line provides formal and relational connections to the academic program. This, in turn, allows us to build partnerships with faculty, forge connections with the curriculum, and establish understanding, awareness, and acceptance of service-learning as an innovative teaching pedagogy. While based in the academic division, the CELTS staff build relationships with other areas of campus as well, such as student affairs, faith-based programs, and centers focused on diverse student populations. These relationships strengthen our student-focused work by connecting us with colleagues who are well versed in the language, concepts, and practicalities of student development and program implementation. They have also allowed us to work with colleagues to identify ways for more students to have access to community engagement activities and to develop strategies for supporting student academic success.

Within our center, the opportunities for organizational and programmatic links between curricular and cocurricular services allow us to emphasize learning that takes place through all forms of community engagement. For example, the structured reflection activities that we facilitate help students to apply knowledge from their coursework to their community service. At the same time, students tell us that their community experiences provide a context for their academic studies.

Learning through Leading

Coordinating the logistics of mobilizing, supervising, and advising student service and service-learning activities can be all consuming. These challenges include effectively training volunteers, transporting students to community sites, and maintaining sustainable relationships with community partner organizations. In 1995, John Sarvey summarized a set of structural characteristics that he observed as common to many civic engagement programs that were effectively addressing these challenges. He called this set of characteristics the “Coalition of Projects Model.”¹ We have found this framework to closely reflect the structure of the community service and service-learning programs coordinated through CELTS. In our case, CELTS is the umbrella organization, and issue-based or population-based, student-led teams are the semiautonomous projects that carry out community-based work. As Sarvey recommends, the CELTS structure also includes “a set of overall student leaders who provide a range of leadership and support functions to all the projects” (1995, 4).

The Coalition of Projects Model consists of ten structural characteristics (Sarvey, 1995):

1. An umbrella organization of multiple programs, where each program is its own identifiable separate program under a larger umbrella;

2. Issue- or neighborhood-focused projects, where students find the issue they are passionate about and volunteer for a particular issue-specific team, not a general or generic service center;

3. Group coordination of volunteers, where student coordinators and volunteers are grouped together as teams, not in individual placements;

4. Cascading leadership structure, where students work their way up from volunteer to managing their own issue-specific team;

5. Coalition-wide support functions for the projects, where student leaders come together to help support each other and share ideas;

6. Systematic training of project leaders, where these students are provided with the skills to help manage their program;

7. Systematic exchange of challenges and best practices among projects, where student leaders come together to learn from each other;

8. Systematic quality improvement process, where students evaluate the state of their program on a regular basis;

9. New project incubation, where a clear process is created for adding more programs;

10. Student office space for the community service program, where each program under the “umbrella” has its own identifiable space, with file cabinets, a telephone, and so on.

Together, these components address many of the universal challenges faced by those creating opportunities for student community engagement. The model provides opportunities for students to focus on a particular social issue and to connect with community organizations and leaders who are experts in addressing that particular issue. It provides a structure for organizing and focusing students in specific roles, and it makes room for students to gradually develop knowledge, skills, and responsibilities as they spend time in the program. The structure allows for continuity from year to year, which leads to strong relationships with community partner organizations that can be developed over time. The model also provides opportunities for students to develop a sense of ownership: students are training and learning from each other, they are helping to identify and address areas of needed improvement, and they have their own space for working and building community with each other and with professional staff. Ultimately, this model allows students to implement the community service and service-learning programming, so that the professional staff can focus on training, advising, oversight, and development of programs.

A cascading leadership development structure is the cornerstone of the way that CELTS student involvement is organized. Our center uses a combination of federal work-study and volunteer positions to implement this structure, but similar structures are utilized at schools without labor programs: some use work-study positions, some use student volunteers, and some use a combination of the two. Connecting student leadership positions with work-study and other funding sources can provide critical support for the infrastructure that makes this model effective. In our case, the Berea College Labor Program allows us to leverage a unique resource at our institution, which helps our programs to succeed.

Berea is one of seven federally recognized “work colleges” in the United States, each of which requires students to make work a meaningful part of their college experience, and which together make up the Work Colleges Consortium. At Berea College, every student is required to work at least ten hours per week in a labor, or work-study, position on campus or in the community. Students’ labor positions provide them with opportunities to learn practical and job-specific skills; ideally, as students develop experience in their labor positions, they are able to advance to positions of increasing responsibility, with many eventually managing other students and programs. This is the case for students who hold labor positions through CELTS.

During the academic year, CELTS offers eight different community service programs, focused on a variety of issues and populations, including tutoring and mentoring children and teens, building relationships with elders, making connections with the Spanish-speaking community, advocating for environmental and sustainability issues, building homes with Habitat for Humanity, and supporting victims of domestic violence. The range of issue-specific and/or population-specific programs draws a diverse mix of students into the work of the center. The student volunteers for each of these programs are recruited, trained, and supervised by teams of student leaders. The student Program Manager is the leader of each team and is selected by the CELTS staff after serving as an effective team member and demonstrating leadership potential; the Program Managers are charged with the responsibility of training their team members and volunteers, and with supervising the day-to-day operation of their programs.

Students often begin volunteering as first-year students, spending at least two hours each week with their issue-specific community service program. Each spring, students have the opportunity to apply to become a member of one of the program teams. The current team of students selects ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction—Deep, Pervasive, and Integrated: Developmental Frameworks for Students, Partnerships, Faculty Engagement, and Centers
• Part I Students as Civic-Minded Professionals: An Approach for Student Development
• Part II Developmental, Engaged, and Educational Partnerships
• Part III Faculty: Exploring New Epistemologies for Academic Community Engagement
• Part IV Centers
• Part V Critical Insights and Reflections
• Part VI Conclusion
• List of Contributors
• Index