The University of Michigan has a long history of community service and service learning from its historic role in the founding of the Peace Corps in 1964 to the active involvement of students and faculty throughout its 178-year history.
The term "service learning," however, was coined in 1967 from the work of educators Robert Sigmon and William Ramsey. The key principle of service learning, according to one of its major proponents, David Kolb, is that experience is "the source of learning and development." Its supporters ground it in the educational and philosophical thinking of John Dewey, who was at the University of Michigan when he formally broached the subject of the interaction between practical experience and education.
In How We Think (1933) and Experience and Education (1938), Dewey posed the question, "How is it that experiences are educative?" Dewey theorized that teachers could make them so by structuring experiential situations so that students learned as they interacted with other forces in their environment, whether those forces were other people, wild life, the plant world, products of labor or works of the imagination.
In recent years, Michigan students have volunteered in increasing numbers to help the disabled, clean up the environment, serve meals in soup kitchens and provide many other forms of community-service. The Alternative Spring Break, in which students devote their week off to work in low-income communities nationwide, had 450 volunteers this February, twice last year's number.
At the same time, many more faculty have integrated community service into their courses and are studying the impact of service learning not only on student learning but also on the academic discipline.
As an expression of the upsurge in service learning, the University recently created the new position of director of community service and service learning within the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs and named Barry N. Checkoway, professor of social work and of urban and regional planning, to the post.
"Throughout US higher education, schools are increasing efforts to integrate service and learning on campus and in the community," Checkoway told Michigan Today.
The primary reason for involving students in the community is to advance their sense of social responsibility. But, Checkoway says, the goals of the service-learning movement also include the following:
¤ Exposing students to the diverse society they will live and work in after they have completed their formal education,
¤ Helping society tackle social problems by tapping flow of knowledge in the academic world and strengthening research responsive to the community, and
¤ Testing hypotheses, models, strategies and policies for the benefit of faculty, students and various communities.
Higher education has been involved in service learning for years through internships, work-study programs, summer jobs and study-abroad programs coordinated by academic units.
"What is new," Checkoway said, "is the effort at Michigan to integrate service and learning on campus and in the community and to expand service learning to fields and academic departments that did not previously identify it as an element of tehir pedagogy. New, too, is the effort to formalize community service learning through research, theoretical writings and publications devoted to campus-community links on the local and national levels.
Checkoway emphasized that his new position "builds upon and extends the capabilities of the 30 year-old Office of Community Service Learning" (OCSL).
OCSL Director Jeffrey Howard has already launched the first national publication on community service learning, Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, and the first two volumes in a proposed series to guide and record U-M service learning activities, Praxis I and Praxis II.
One of the CSL programs with the potential for major impact is the Michigan Neighborhood AmeriCorps Program, a part of the federal service program President Clinton established last year and funded for three years at many schools nationwide.
"At Michigan, AmeriCorps involves students from five graduate professional schools with community residents from 10 neighborhood-based organizations in Detroit," Checkoway said. "The Institute for Public Policy Studies [Editor's note: In 1995 the Institute became the School of Public Policy.] and the schools of social work, public health, business and education are involved in the program."
Unlike the Peace Corps, there is no central control. The goal is to develop the capacity of educational institutions to collaborate with communities to solve problems. "The scope and quality of activity is increasing rapidly despite our limited resources for the purpose," Checkoway said. "These activities are challenging us to find new funding sources and to consider the possibility of a new facility to bring projects together and their planning and coordination.
The following is only a partial list of recent service-learning efforts that place students and faculty in research, learning, teaching and service relationships with the community.
¤ The School of Education's E-mail Exchange matches education students with at-risk secondary school students. Both read several common texts and discuss them via e-mail.
¤ U-M students tutor inmates from Washtenaw County Prison who are seeking a high school diploma.
¤ School of Nursing students provide health care and health assessments for seniors through the Northeast Seniors at Domino House program.
¤ Law School students provide pro bono legal service for the elderly.
¤ Through the U-SEARCH program, undergraduate students tutor in an after-school literacy program at the Scarlett Middle School and Northside Community Center.
¤ School of Social Work students learn and serve during internships at 77 Washtenaw County agencies, providing key staff support at no cost to the agencies.
¤ Students in "Theater and Drama 437" adapt drama activities for persons with disabilities.
¤ Biology 106 involves students in environmental awareness projects.
¤ Dental students provide dental care for senior citizens at various area nursing homes.
¤ Practical English class projects include writing brochures, grants, publicity and histories for community organizations and social agencies.
For comprehensive information about community service learning at U-M, contact Jeffrey Howard at the U-M OCSL, 1024 Hill Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-3310; phone (734) 763-3548, fax (734) 647-7464, or e-mail jphoward@umich.edu
. . . March 1995