A Season of Service: Introducing Service Learning into the Liberal Arts Curriculum

Service Learning: What's a Political Scientist Doing in Yonkers?

“…The students' emphasis on time and process returned in many of their final papers as several wrote about integrating their professional careers in law, finance, education, and social work with their goal of working to improve communities like southwest Yonkers. By helping the students recognize the ongoing nature of community development, the program may have laid the groundwork for the students to integrate community development work into their professional lives instead of occasionally volunteering and viewing such work as charity or altruism in which they "give something back" to a community they consider underprivileged (Markus, King, and Howard 1993;Barber and Battistoni 1993).…”

“…This synthesis indicates that, while service learning works well as a component in undergraduate pedagogy, it should not stand alone from, nor replace, more traditional learning activities involving primary research and discussion of social science theories (Corder 1991;Barber and Battistoni 1993).…”

“…The program's financing became a key means for involving the students in planning the program-a goal I had adopted in an effort to increase the collaboration and collegiality of the experience (Barber and Battistoni 1993). Making students responsible for the program's finances transformed the project from one of altruistic service to a more concrete academic project in which budgets had to be met or the class would fail.…”

“…In coordinating the project with Greyston, their personnel and I emphasized that Greyston was a partner in the students' education. Greyston became a full partner in the pedagogy of experiential learning and not simply a forum in which the students could perform several hours of community service (Barber and Battistoni 1993).…”

“…In comparison to students who took only the lecture course, the service learning students in the Markus, King, and Howard experiment reported greater understanding of connections among normative principles and possible applications, greater awareness of societal problems, greater frequency of reconsidering attitudes, and greater sense of personal responsibility. For the project at University of Virginia, my goals went beyond providing a few hours of community service to developing a model in which the students would integrate classroom learning with community experience and come away with a better sense of how to make improving their communities a part of their careers (Barber and Battistoni 1993).…”