Civic Engagement Resources: Service-Learning in Higher Education

Our communities depend on our ability to make the connection between education and democracy. This book can breathe new life into colleges and universities that want to reinforce their public service mission. Jacoby and her colleagues tell us how to do it. --Dolores E. Cross, president, Chicago State University Combining the most current theory and practice in the field of service-learning with many examples from actual campuses, Service-Learning in Higher Education is a comprehensive guide to developing high-quality service-learning experiences both in the curriculum and through student affairs programs.

In Creating Citizens, professors and administrators at Auburn University’s College of Liberal Arts recount valuable, first-hand experiences teaching Community and Civic Engagement (CCE). They demonstrate that, contrary to many expectations, CCE instruction both complements the mission of liberal arts curricula and powerfully advances the fundamental mission of American land-grand institutions.

Involving Colleges details the extracurricular environments of fourteen diverse involving colleges and universities and shows how and where successful conditions and characteristics can be adapted to institutions to complement the institution′s unique educational purpose and mission.

This volume summarizes the final report (MR-998-EDU) on RAND's three-year evaluation of the Learn and Serve America Higher Education (LSAHE) program. It discusses the major activities and accomplishments of the LSAHE-supported programs; the impacts of LSAHE on students, communities, and institutions; and the returns on the public assessment in LSAHE. It also presents the main conclusions of the evaluation: that LSAHE was highly successful in serving communities and had mixed success in promoting student development and institutional change, and that even though expenditures exceeded the value of LSAHE to communities, value increased each year, suggesting that long-term positive returns may occur.

This seventh volume in the Outreach Scholarship book series contributes a unique discussion of how service learning functions as a critical cornerstone of outreach scholarship. The sections and chapters of this book marshal evidence in support of the idea that undergraduate service learning, infused throughout the curriculum and coupled with outreach scholarship, is an integral means through which higher education can engage people and institutions of the communities of this nation in a manner that perpetuate civil society.

Here, Stoecker questions the prioritization and theoretical/philosophical underpinnings of the core concepts of service learning: 1. learning, 2. service, 3. community, and 4. change. By "liberating" service learning, he suggests reversing the prioritization of the concepts, starting with change, then community, then service, and then learning. In doing so, he clarifies the benefits and purpose of this work, arguing that it will create greater pedagogical and community impact.
Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement challenges—and hopefully will change—our thinking about higher education community engagement.

In Community Service and Higher Learning, Robert A. Rhoads examines the experiences of students as they commit themselves to community service during their college years. The author explores how a student's sense of self may be challenged through involvement in the lives of others within the context of community service relationships.