The Challenge | Impact on Academic Community | Implementation and Use of Resources | The Response
The Challenge
Since 1991, over 40 Alma faculty (more than one-third of the full-time staff) have created or revised courses in twenty-three different disciplines. The College has advanced from offering no service learning courses to enrolling over 63% of the past six graduating classes in academic service learning courses.
Service learning has affected the scholarship and professional development activities of Alma faculty as well. This program has served the students, the faculty, and the broader community by encouraging and enabling faculty to develop courses which introduce students to public service and civic education. The Alma College Service Learning Program has been recognized by the Michigan Campus Compact and has provided a model for faculty involvement in similar programs on other campuses.
Since the mid-1980s, college and university faculty have been concerned about the apathy of their college students with regard to significant social issues. The "Me" generation seemed intent only upon careerism and self promotion and showed little evidence of an ethic of social responsibility. The faculty and student life administrators at Alma College were concerned that the quite capable students who matriculated had demonstrated great skill at excelling in their course work and building their resumes, but had little or no experience or skill at helping others and no understanding about why they should. In spite of the numerous student life organizations and their various activities, including community service and philanthropies, it was clear to several faculty that a sense of conviction was absent which could not be instilled without faculty involvement. Further, the curriculum at that time held little promise for reversing these trends. Training for civic engagement and social action seemed to be the responsibility of the student life offices. Instruction at Alma, as at many institutions, was devoted to the transmission of subject matter concepts, training for pre-professional programs, and preparation for graduate school. Faculty involvement, however, was difficult to secure from instructors who were busy teaching a full load of classes, advising students, serving on campus committees, and conducting their own necessary scholarship. The challenge seemed to center about the need to free faculty time and energy in order to incorporate service learning principles with their courses and thus provide a direct means of influencing student attitudes and behaviors.
Impact on Academic Community
Service learning has affected the scholarship activities of Alma faculty as well. during the past eleven years, Alma faculty have presented numerous papers at regional and national meetings on the subject of service learning in their respective disciplines. Moreover, three different faculty have succeeded in placing articles about their service learning activities for publication. Alma faculty were invited to present Alma's program as a model at the Michigan Campus Compact Annual Conference. A faculty member has chapters in the forth coming monograph series to be published by AAHE/National Campus Compact. Alma faculty have also served on planning committees for national and state service-learning conferences. These achievements reflect a rather high level of activity for faculty at a small, liberal arts college like Alma. Moreover, both students and faculty have received recognition, both regionally and nationally, for their service learning efforts. Students have received the Michigan Campus Compact Student Community Service Award, one a finalist for the Campus Compact Howard R. Swearer Student Humanitarian Award. From the beginning, program assessment was a critical element of the service learning program. As noted above, each proposal for a service learning award was required to include a plan for pre- and post-evaluation of the course's impact. Typically, the post-assessment is achieved by means of journal entries, student surveys, or papers. In addition to the evaluation of course impact on students, the program coordinator has surveyed cooperating agencies in order to assess the contributions the various program elements have made in the Alma community and to determine ways in which the programs can be improved. The overall program has been formally assessed in reports to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, to Michigan Campus Compact, and to the College administration. Nearly all of these efforts have affirmed the value of service learning in the Alma curriculum.
Implementation and Use of Resources
Under the terms of the Kellogg grant, faculty were eligible to receive $1,000 to support the creation of a new course, $500 to revise an existing course to include a service learning module, and $750 to develop an internship experience associated with the topic of the annual service learning colloquium. Course proposals were reviewed and approved by the Service Learning Task Force. In the 11 years since 1991, over 40 Alma faculty (more than one-third of the full-time staff) have created or revised 59 courses in twenty-three different disciplines in accordance with these criteria.
In addition to providing financial support for faculty development, the grant had also funded a half-time administrative position to help faculty develop course-related placements for their students and attend to other details. Due to the success of service learning on the campus, the College decided to continue that position and related expenses as part of the operating budget since 1994. Moreover, one of the professors who had been heavily involved in the program learned that federal legislation required a percentage of all federal work study allocations to be dedicated to support students engaged in community service activities. Since 1994, the Financial Aid Office has reserved the appropriate amount of funds for that purpose and has provided stipends for students who elected to forego summer earnings in order to enroll in a community service work-study.
With the conclusion of the grant from the Kellogg Foundation in 1994, the College's commitment to service learning has been demonstrated by continued support in scheduling decisions and in the operating budget.
The Response
It was for this reason that service learning at Alma emerged from the work of an ad hoc task force of seven faculty who began meeting on a biweekly basis in the summer of 1990. The purpose of the task force was to explore ways to integrate public service and civic education into the college curriculum. On August 21-22, 1990, the task force sponsored a symposium, "Integrating Service Learning into the Curriculum," for the Alma faculty and then conducted a survey to determine existing course offerings which had a substantial service component. In addition, the task force developed a packet of alternative formats which other faculty could use to incorporate service learning into their courses and investigated potential funding sources. As a result of these preliminary efforts, Alma College received a $103,215 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to fund an undergraduate service learning program focusing on public service, social conscience, and civic responsibility. This grant formalized the ad hoc group which became the Service Learning Task Force and funded the appointment of a half-time administrative position to coordinate service learning activities. Since May, 1991, the Alma College Service Learning Program has promoted curricular development in three areas: departmental courses with a service learning theme or component; interdisciplinary service learning courses; and service based internships. The Kellogg Foundation grant earmarked significant funding for faculty development to support the creation of new courses or the modification of existing courses which would consider the relationship of an academic discipline to 1) service to society, 2) responsibilities of citizenship, or 3) ethical issues. To be considered for funding, courses were to exhibit a significant academic focus, in which the relationship between the academic discipline and public service, citizenship, or issues of justice was explored; a significant experiential component, in which students would have the opportunity to integrate academic and experience-based understandings of service; structured opportunities for reflection following the service experience; and pre- and post-evaluation of the impact of the service-learning course. This approach to curricular change through the provision of faculty development opportunities was a novel one for an important reason: the service learning initiative was faculty driven. Faculty wrote the grant proposal, conducted the workshops and symposia, and recruited and trained other faculty to become service learning advocates. Although most efforts to incorporate a developmental agenda with the curriculum at Alma have been deterred due to lack of faculty support (e.g., career preparation, multi-culturalism, and leadership), the Kellogg grant provided the initial opportunity to encourage faculty innovation including research, identification of relevant placements for the students, and the payment of honoraria to speakers and consultants. Since then, more grant opportunites have been available through Michigan Campus Compact.
