Service learning: What is it?

Broadly conceived, service learning has two essential components. First, as a part of their coursework, students engage in some form of significant contact with the surrounding community, often through a community service agency. Then, the students reflect upon their experience in the context of issues, texts, and methods of the course. It is much more than "volunteerism for credit." Rather, through service learning students find a concrete meaning, foundation, or foil for their abstract studies in class. Service learning can take as many forms as there are faculty. It can include a day working at a soup kitchen as part of a discussion on homelessness, or work on oral history projects with cultural organizations as a part of the study of history, literature, or applied ethics, or a weekly session in a rehabilitation center as part of a psychology or neuroscience course, or a semester of tutoring in courses in applied subjects, or field research on behalf of community agencies in methods courses, or work with arts agencies as a part of fine arts or creative writing courses, or ....

Why do it?

From the perspective of students, service learning satisfies a natural desire to see how issues, policies, and people interact, and how theories unfold in the real world. Many students come to Trinity and other urban schools attracted to the opportunities of study in the city. Service learning is an excellent opportunity to provide this "real world" experience. From the faculty perspective, the service learning experience often awakens students to the real consequences and applications of their studies. This appears in the classroom in the form of deeper understanding of and engagement with course issues.

Then what is "community learning"?

"Community" suggests interaction between people, while "service" connotes a one-way street -- I serve you, or you serve me. At Trinity we have discovered that successful service learning/research experiences begin as collaborations, where both the student and the persons she interacts with share a goal and work toward that goal together. That usually leads to friendly relationships, sharing of perspectives, significant learning on both sides, and the growth of community.