May 2012 Articles

The Friends of Service-Learning & Civic Engagement breakfast is one of my favorite days at Wright State.  Students, staff, faculty and community partners celebrate come together to celebrate service-learning and raise money for our Citizen Scholar certificate program.  There are awards, a silent auction, a celebration of our community partnerships and impact statements from our campus AmeriCORPS VISTA members.  The best part about this morning, for me, was that four friends from Athens County with whom we partnered on the alternative spring break…

Those of you familiar with the service-learning literature have likely seen the name Dr. Andrew Furco.  He's responsible for, among many other publications, an often-cited figure that lays out the "distinctions among service programs."  It highlights the fact that service-learning mutually benefits the student (service provider) and the community partner (service recipient).  The figure…

Last week, hundreds of instruction librarians gathered in Columbus, Ohio for the biggest LOEX conference ever.  I was thrilled that the planning committee included a presentation about service-learning in the program.  Chris Sweet, Information Literacy Librarian at Illinois Wesleyan University, presented a case study of a course with which he was involved at his institution.  He was embedded in an environmental studies senior seminar that…

Last Friday, I co-presented at the Michigan Library Association Academic Libraries conference.  My co-presenters, Suzanne Gray (Eastern Michigan University), Shannon Zoet (Michigan Campus Compact), and I spoke with about 35 Michigan academic librarians.  We spoke about how pairing information literacy and service-learning can advance the library's impact on the curriculum and the community. Here's our handout. I gave a…