Community Service Learning (CSL) connects students with members of a community who guide them in providing service that addresses significant community needs or contributes to community members’ goals and aspirations. Service learning courses help students maximize learning by preparing them for the experience and structuring their reflection upon it. Community service is integrated with learning in order to enhance both.
The historic land-grant mission at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has created a strong tradition of engagement between units of the campus and members of communities throughout the state. CSL extends this tradition by bringing it into the university’s academic mission of research and teaching.
Formal efforts to establish service-learning at UMass began in 1993 when Glen Gordon, then Provost, established the Provost’s Special Committee on Service Learning "to encourage and expand the range of service learning courses." The Committee concluded that such courses were among "the most challenging and influential experiences on campus."
Since that time, the Provost’s Committee, chaired by Professor David Schimmel, has provided funding and support to over 100 faculty in Service-Learning Faculty Fellowships for individuals to build CSL into their courses, for teams of faculty to design CSL courses together, and for faculty to conduct CSL-related research. Each semester approximately 1000 students—mostly undergraduates—participate in CSL courses and work with community organizations.
In 1999, Commonwealth College opened its doors as the new honors college. At that time, the College administration declared CSL as one of its core values and created the Office of Community Service Learning (OCSL) to develop CSL within the Commonwealth College curriculum and to support the development of CSL across the campus.
CSL programs at UMass have won national recognition:
- IMPACT!, the Commonwealth College learning community for first-year students committed to CSL, is featured in a recent book, Service-Learning and the First-Year Experience: Preparing Students for Personal Success and Civic Responsibility.
- The Citizen Scholars Program <link: home/students/student programs/Citizen Scholars Program>, a Commonwealth College two-year undergraduate program, is one of 21 nationwide programs featured in the forthcoming book, Educating for Democracy: Preparing Undergraduates for Political Engagement.
- The Communication Department's extensive involvement in CSL is featured in the new book, Engaging Departments: Moving Faculty Culture from Private to Public, Individual to Collective Focus for the Common Good.
- Professor Arthur Keene’s curricular alternative spring break program, "Grassroots Community Development," has a chapter in Campus Compact’s new book, Students as Colleagues.
- These programs and others led to UMass Amherst's being selected as one of 81 campuses out of over 900 applicants to be included in The Princeton Review’s guide, Colleges with a Conscience.
Commonwealth College and the Office of University Outreach fund CSL programs at UMass through the Office of Community Service Learning. CSL also has received significant amounts of external funding. In the past six years, external funding sources have provided about $500,000 in grants to OCSL and additional funding to individual faculty members. Funding has included a prestigious three-year federal grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service and the assignment each year of one or more VISTAs (Volunteers In Service To America) to the campus, paid by Massachusetts Campus Compact. In addition, an alumni family has established a $75,000 endowment for the Citizen Scholars Program and has committed to provide an additional $100,000 by 2010 "to support programming that transforms students’ lives."
The last strategic plan for CSL at UMass was written by the Provost’s Committee in 1999. Many of its goals have now been met. In Spring 2006, the Provost’s Committee worked with OCSL staff members to craft an updated plan. This new plan articulates a vision for enhancing CSL at UMass over the next three years, and presents a set of focused goals and strategies for achieving each goal. During fall semester 2006, the Provost's Committee and OCSL staff will develop an accompanying Operational Plan that sets priorities, defines measurable outcomes, establishes responsibilities, and crafts a timeline. Both plans stand on the assumption of continued attention to maintaining and improving the quality of current CSL programs, courses, and other initiatives.
Vision and Goals for CSL at UMass Amherst
VISION: For UMass Amherst to become a national center of excellence for the integration of learning and scholarship with service and community engagement. The integration of these activities is a powerful tool for enhancing student learning and for creating a more just society.
Goal I.
Enhance infrastructure for community service learning |
- Increase and stabilize funding and diversify sources of support
- Align CSL funding needs with those of the campus and integrate those needs into the campus' development plan
- Develop a case statement for CSL
- Identify and pursue a major donor
- Secure a staff position to identify and pursue support from individual donors, foundations and organizations that support CSL and/or community engagement
|
- Improve institutional standards for CSL
- Develop procedures that ensure involvement of the Provost's Committee on Service-Learning as a coordinating or consulting body for the campus' CSL-related proposals to external sources of funding which accept a limited number of proposals from the campus
- Develop a set of institutional criteria that all of the campus' CSL courses must meet and determine procedures for reviewing and approving courses and designating them in the course schedule and catalog
- Seek university participation in the Carnegie Foundation Community Engagement elective classification of colleges and universities
- Identify nationally prominent peer institutions that constitute appropriate benchmarks for CSL
|
- Strengthen the relationship between Commonwealth College and community service learning
- Assess and articulate how CSL contributes to Commonwealth College’s curricular goals
- Broaden CSL options within the Commonwealth College curriculum to include courses that fulfill general education requirements, courses in majors and capstone courses
|
- Expand CSL program assessment and disseminate outcomes to relevant University offices.
|
- Increase the visibility of CSL on campus
- Collaborate with Deans, Directors, and Department Heads to co-sponsor events intended to introduce new faculty and staff to CSL
- Collaborate with appropriate advising units (such as the Undergraduate Dean's Advisory Group and the Undergraduate Advising and Academic Support Center) to familiarize campus advisors with CSL options and opportunities
- Collaborate with appropriate units (such as the Center for Student Development) to increase awareness of community service as a tool for student development
|
sdafasdf
sdfasdf
Goal II.
Enhance CSL curriculum and improve student learning |
- Offer a continuum of CSL courses
- Develop and offer an introductory general education course on civic engagement
- Develop resources to support students pursuing a self-designed major in public service and community engagement
- Develop an undergraduate certificate program in public service and community engagement
- Build the CSL master's track in Higher Education Administration
- Create a Higher Education Administration doctoral certificate in CSL
|
- Prepare students for undertaking the issues in which CSL engages them
- Address diversity and social justice issues within CSL courses
- Offer diversity and social justice trainings for students across the campus
|
- Encourage involvement in CSL among students from all racial, ethnic, cultural, gender and socio-economic groups
|
Goal III.
Enhance collaborations and support strategic CSL partnerships |
- Coordinate the efforts of the Office of Community Service Learning with other campus units (such as the Offices of Research Affairs, Student Affairs, and University Outreach and its programs)
|
- Integrate CSL into the campus' recruitment strategy
- Collaborate with the staff in appropriate university offices (such as the Undergraduate Admissions Office) to promote CSL as one of the university's assets and as an opportunity to prospective students
- Develop and launch a service and leadership summer institute for high school students and teachers
- Encourage the offices that create general publications about UMass (such as Admissions, UMass Amherst Magazine, Office of News and Information, University Advancement, the Alumni Association) to feature CSL
|
- Enhance relationships between community organizations and UMass Amherst
- Offer community-based organizations an orientation to campus resources
- Develop mechanisms for identifying and selecting community partners
|
Goal IV.
Promote CSL as a tool for faculty professional and personal development |
- Develop and make widely available resources for developing and managing CSL courses
- Collaborate with appropriate university units (such as the Center for Teaching) to build and incorporate into new faculty orientation a module on CSL and community engagement
- Collaborate with appropriate university units (such as the Center for Teaching) to include information on CSL in graduate teaching assistants' orientation
- Expand the Service Learning Faculty Fellowships program
- Affect the faculty reward system to include and value CSL and community engagement
|
- Collaborate with appropriate university offices, units and other bodies to create mechanisms for faculty to conduct research that addresses community needs
- Conceptualize and develop a framework for a Center for Community-Based Research
|
- Seek forums for scholarly presentations and publications about CSL at UMass and build awareness of CSL scholarship opportunities
- Seek to highlight faculty work in an issue of "Equity and Excellence"
- Collaborate with the Faculty Senate Outreach Council to include CSL in its efforts to promote the scholarship of engagement
|
