Final Report

 

The Development of a Service-Learning Component for

 

SYD 3700-001

Racial and Ethnic Relations

 

James Cavendish

Department of Sociology

July 30, 2001

 

 

 

During the summer, 2000, I met with a group of five faculty members to plan either full-fledged service-learning courses or service-learning components for our courses.  It was – and still is --my intention to develop a full-fledged service learning course around the topics of my Racial and Ethnic Relations course.  However, as my course preparations developed that summer, it became obvious that I should begin this venture by simply developing a service-learning component to the course as it already existed, see how it goes, and then make decisions about the feasibility of a full-fledged service-learning course in the future.  I must admit that one of the forces moving me in the direction of offering a service-learning component, instead of a full-fledged course, was the requirement, voiced by my chairperson, that I develop a course that would attract at least 45 students, which is the cap set for my undergraduate Racial and Ethnic Relations course.  So, I developed a service-learning component to my course and adopted a structure similar to that used by one of my colleagues, Sara Green, when she teaches her course in Disabilities. 

 

Enclosed you will see three documents: (1) The final syllabus for the Spring, 2001, semester, which is only a slightly modified version of my Fall, 2000, syllabus; (2) The guidelines for the service-learning component which were distributed to all students interested in signing up for the service-learning component; and (3) The contract which students were to use to establish clear expectations and parameters between their community partners, themselves, and me, the instructor for the course.

 

As the syllabus indicates, I set up a service-learning component to the course in much the same way that other instructors set up internships.  By signing up for the service-learning experience, students were given the opportunity to work with a community partner, and in the process, earn between one and three additional credit hours, depending how many hours of service they were able to devote to their community partner.  The final page of the syllabus describes the numerous community partners that students could work with.  This list was generated and finalized after lengthy conversations with representatives of the organization; each partner was informed of the nature of the course and the intent of the service-learning experience. 

 

During the fall, 2000, semester, I invited many of the community partners into my class to speak about their organization, how the issues faced by their organization were applicable to the course, and the kinds of volunteer activities they had available.  In all, three partners accepted the invitation – one from the National Conference for Community and Justice, one from Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and one from Francis House.  Several students signed up with one of these agencies, but in the end, only four students completed the service-learning component of the course. 

 

I offered the same service-learning component to my spring, 2001, class, but this time there were fewer students interested in signing up. 

 

 

Reactions to Specific Questions and Overall Assessment

 

 

1.  For those of you who actually taught the course this year, will you continue to offer the course as a service-learning course?  What changes will you make?  (kind of service?  reflections? etc.)

 

I will continue to offer the course SYA 4949-001: Sociological Internship for the Study of Racial and Ethnic Relations but in a different form than I originally conceived.  As I had originally planned the service-learning component/internship, it was my intent to have students sign up for the internship while they were currently taking the course SYD 3700-001: Racial and Ethnic Relations.  What has evolved, however, is that students who’ve taken Racial and Ethnic Relations, but for some reason weren’t able to take SYA 4949 during the same semester, ask if they can sign up for the service-learning internship the subsequent semester.  In fact, this fall (fall, 2001) will be the first semester where the majority of students signed up for SYA 4949 are students who formerly took my Racial and Ethnic Relations course.

 

This has sparked a number of changes.  One of the changes is that students who sign up for SYA 4949, while not currently taking the Racial and Ethnic Relations course, are still required to share their experiences with the students in the class at key points during the semester.  Because they have taken the Racial and Ethnic Relations course previously, they can reflect on the community experiences in light of the course, and come into the classroom equipped to share the commonalities between course content and community experience with the class.

 

I also anticipate making changes in the number of agencies the students can work with.  While I had previously allowed students to select from as many as eleven community agencies, I’ve discovered that this approach isn’t very practical.  Although students like the freedom of choosing agencies that match their interests, it’s very difficult to “keep tabs” on these organizations and the relationships they develop (or don’t develop) with my students.  Among the agencies that seemed to work well in this kind of partnership are Francis House, Metropolitan Ministries, and the National Conference for Community and Justice.  Although Big Brother/Big Sisters also provides excellent services to the community, this agency was not as suitable to the service-learning model.  For one, the agency, by necessity, must complete extensive background checks of its volunteers.  This necessarily delayed the time when students could begin, and as a consequence, few students were willing to sign up, and the ones who did became frustrated.

 

 

 

2.  Has the experience of the last year (either teaching a service-learning class or planning one) affected your other teaching?  your research?

 

Offering the service-learning component to my undergraduate Racial and Ethnic Relations course has certainly affected my other teaching assignments.  This was particularly true in the Spring, 2001, semester because I was simultaneously teaching a graduate-level Race, Class, and Inequality.  What was nice about this arrangement was my ability to take the experiences shared by my undergraduates into the graduate setting and vice-versa. 

 

The service-learning component has been less directly relevant to my research except in the sense that it provided me with some background for helping to plan the University as Citizen Conference and edit a special issue of the journal Metropolitan Ministries. 

 

 

3.  What advice would you give other faculty about service-learning.

 

I think if I were to advise faculty who are considering adopting a service-learning approach or component to the course, I would say the following:

 

(1) As much as we’d like for pedagogy to be free from the constraints of finances, SCH, etc., we don’t live in a perfect world.  More often than not, we need to plan courses that will fill to their maximum capacity, and given this reality, I would advise adopting a service-learning component – rather than a full-fledged service-learning course – if you’re planning to offer the course during the nine-month academic year.  It may not be as critical for courses to fill to their capacity during the summer, so this is an optimal time to plan a full-fledged service-learning course.  Besides, student and faculty schedules are probably best suited to a full-fledged course during the summer months rather than during the academic year.

 

(2) Try to limit the number of agencies you’re working with so you can keep abreast of the activities they and your students are planning.  Ideally, it would be good if you can actually be a part of the planning process, in which you sit down with community partners and students on a regular basis to collectively reflect on the relationships between course content and the experiences in the community.  I’ve done this with my students while reviewing their bi-weekly logs (see the Guidelines sheet), but seldom was I able to have meetings in which community partners sat down with all of us to discuss these experiences and plan additional ones.

 

 

Overall Assessment

 

I think service learning, whether in the form of a course component/internship or in the form of a full-fledged course, is an invaluable experience for students, and for this reason I hope more and more faculty adopt it as a viable pedagogy.  Already, the University of South Florida has demonstrated its commitment to this pedagogy by bringing to the university folks like Robin Jones who stand solidly behind this way of learning/serving.  However, I think the university can still work on developing the kinds of resources and infrastructure necessary to make service learning a more appealing option for faculty.  First, I think it would be helpful for an office of the university to offer staff support for faculty wishing to developing partnerships with members of the community.  These support personnel could help contact community agencies, facilitate communication between students, community partners, and faculty, and serve as a repository of information regarding which community agencies are interested in developing partnerships with the university and/or seeking volunteers or interns to help with their services.  I was hoping the university had a Volunteer-Coordination Office that conducted these activities but apparently it doesn’t.   Secondly, I think the university should continue to host the kinds of activities that Robin Jones and the Center for Teaching Enhancement have been hosting over the past few semesters – that is, teaching enhancement seminars centered around the topic of service learning.  In the spring, 2001, semester, they came up with the great idea of inviting community partners to be a part of the seminars, and even though this was only moderately successful, it set a precedent for future activities.  With additional staff support, and the provision of stipends to community partners who take part in service-learning seminars, I can see where service-learning seminars could be hugely successful.  I, for one, would welcome an opportunity to sit down with a few community partners and discuss at length how their agencies could provide insights for my students into the concepts treated in class.   This can certainly happen on my own initiative, but it would be greatly facilitated by an office/staff whose specialty was maintaining relationships with community partners.