Four Things Faculty Want to Know About

What is Service-Learning?

There are several characteristics which make service-learning a unique way to learn, serve, and teach. Service-learning holds up a mirror for us to see ourselves, a microscope for us to examine our society, and binoculars for us to see what lies ahead.

Characteristics of Service-Learning

• Community service serves as the vehicle for the achievement of specific academic goals and objectives.
• It provides structured time for students to reflect on their service and learning experiences through a mix of writing,reading, speaking, listening, and creating in small and large groups and individual work.
• It fosters the development of those "intangibles"- empathy, personal values, beliefs, awareness, self-esteem, self-confidence, social-responsibility, and helps to foster a sense of caring for others.
• It is based on a reciprocal relationship in which the service reinforces and strengthens the learning, and the learning reinforces and strengthens the service.
• Credit is awarded for learning, college-level learning, not for a requisite number of service hours.

How is service-learning different from Community Service, Internships, Cooperative Education, etc.?

• Service-learning uses community service as the vehicle for the attainment of students' academic goals and objectives.
• Community service fills a need in the community through volunteer efforts. Service-learning also fills that need, but it uses that need as a foundation to examine ourselves, our society, and our future. Further, service-learning provides students with opportunities to use newly acquired skills and knowledge in real-life situations.
• It identifies in advance, and tracks, specific learning objectives and goals (as well as the intangible ones).
• Students perform a valuable, significant, and necessary service which has real consequence to the community.
• The goal of the service is to empower students and those being served.
• The needs of the community dictate the service being provided.

What about Liability?

First- consult your university/college attorney or risk manager and review all procedures, coverage and risk, et al. **This information is partially excerpted from NSEE "Combining Service and Learning, Vol. II, pg.39-60

• There is an inherent assumption of risk for which all students are responsible. All volunteers and service-learners should be fully informed, in advance, of any risks inherent in the activity, must knowingly consent to undertake such risks.
• Your center will exercise due care and attempt to foresee dangers to students and take whatever precautions seem reasonable to avoid them.
• Work with faculty to prepare a list or "pre-approved" sites. Discuss the list in detail going over each agency. Make the professor confident in the agency site, mission, and service activities.
• All service-learners must sign a waiver of liability written by the university's attorney.
• The agency that provides the service-learning experience will, in most cases, be responsible for the acts of students assigned to it and assumes the responsibility for the student. Be certain the agency has liability coverage/insurance for volunteers.

What is the Faculty's role? What is the Center's role? Who Does What?