Service-learning courses reveal real-world issues

Service-learning courses bridge the gap between academia and the “real world” by providing students an opportunity to work at locations within the Madison community where their experiences relate to course material.

In most service-learning courses, students are required to complete between 15 and 25 hours of service per semester. Students usually go to their service sites one or two times a week for a few hours at a time.

Depending on the course they’re taking and the host department, students can find themselves sent anywhere from policy advocacy organizations to publicly financed housing.

“The key component to a service-learning course is that you use course ideas as a way to understand your experiences at your placement site,” says Michael Thornton, faculty director of the Morgridge Center and professor of an Afro-American studies course.

Students are encouraged to connect what they learn in the classroom to their on-site experience by reflecting either via journaling or class discussions.

“Our job in the class is to ask ourselves: ‘Does this correspond with our real-world experiences, what we’re seeing here? How does this help us understand what’s going on in the community?’” says Katherine Cramer Walsh, a political science professor who teaches a service-learning course in the department.

In fact, Randy Wallar, associate director of the Morgridge Center, says studies have shown that connecting academic material with real-world experience helps students learn and retain information much better than learning solely out of books and in the classroom setting.

Wallar adds that it has also been proven to reduce stereotyping, so “evidence is that it’s a good methodology of multicultural education,” he says.

Students typically complete their service independently, although two or three students from each class are often assigned to the same site. However, some courses incorporate group service work.

Because many service sites are located off campus, the Morgridge Center has contracted Union Cab to drive students between their service sites and the Armory and Gymnasium for no cost.

“That’s just one way we wanted to help get students out beyond their bubble and into areas that really need assistance,” Wallar says.

UW–Madison senior Emily Christian, who took the course Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education 300 (Individuals with Disabilities) her freshman year, enjoyed seeing more of Madison than just campus.

“Being able to go out in the community as a freshman really gave me a different perspective on where I lived,” she says. “I think that’s what a lot of students find is that they’re living in this town, they’re living in this community that is very campus-oriented. And service learning allows students to kind of leave that community or see a different side of the place where they live and meet community members that they wouldn’t otherwise.”

During her service-learning experience, Christian worked with the South Madison Coalition of the Elderly, an organization promoting the independence of the elderly and disabled.

Thornton agrees that one of the most beneficial aspects of service learning is getting students out of the exclusive campus environment.

“Ultimately, for the students who get the most out of the class, they’re given some kind of meaning to their life because they can see something that’s larger than them that they can have some kind of influence or impact on,” he says. “What they learn is that they have more power than they think they do.”

Christian, who is majoring in international studies and sociology, is now a service-learning fellow. Her job is to enhance the communication among service-learning sites, professors and students.

UW–Madison senior and service-learning fellow Sarah Parker is majoring in social work. Last fall she took a course on homelessness, Social Work 578.

She did her service work at the Neighborhood House, a Madison nonprofit organization endeavoring to serve any needs that may arise. Parker revamped their food pantry program to serve more people.

Parker says one of the most important things she learned during her service learning was “the reality of working with not-for-profit groups and agencies and how scattered everything can be, and how things truly are understaffed and underpaid. They have way too much that they are expected to do every week and just understanding that they’re doing the best they can.”

But not all service learning is local. Andrea “Tess” Arenas takes service learning outside of Madison every summer.

For her course Environmental Studies 402, Crossing Borders: Environmental Justice at the U.S./Mexico Border, Arenas takes her students to the Mexican border between May and June.

Students spend half of the course living in Brownsville, Texas, and the other in Matamoros, Mexico. The 30 hours of required service learning for this course is spent on education and improving the local environment with initiatives including cleaning up neighborhoods, door-to-door education campaigns on harmful toxins, garbage recycling projects, setting up health screenings and teaching residents to recycle and not burn garbage.

“Because they are two different cities, [students] understand the border dynamics and the environmental justice issues from both perspectives,” Arenas says. “The students, through these service-learning experiences, had a much better understanding of global dynamics, the influence of multinational corporations and the enforcement or lack of enforcement of environmental laws in the United States and Mexico.”

Arenas won the Creative and Innovative Program Award of Merit for a Credit Program for the course in 2006 from the North American Association of Summer Sessions.

While statistics have shown that service-learning courses are highly popular among students — none of the 74 service-learning students in a spring 2008 UW–Madison survey were unsure or disagreed that their service-learning experience was favorable — the university still has trouble getting staff on board to create more courses.

Both Thornton and Arenas hypothesize that some faculty are reluctant to get involved because of the extra work required.

“[When you teach out of books], you don’t have to really stretch your own thinking about the world,” Thornton says. “Service-learning courses require that you take your ideas and apply them to real life. That becomes muddied, that becomes complicated. Then you have to spend time telling the students what that means.”

Arenas points out that there are grant programs and resources available through her office in the College of Letters and Science to help faculty launch new service-learning courses, including a special-needs grant for up to $650 and a planning grant for up to $2,000.

Thornton adds that he hopes to get more students of color and more male students involved in service-learning courses.

“We need to use these resources on campus to make this world a better place and in the process, educate our students in a way that when they go out in the real world and become leaders and managers, they have some experience to base that off of,” he says. “A lot of students find that when they take service learning, they’re more marketable as well because they’ve dealt with the real world.”