MANSFIELD INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND TRANSFORMATON
Grants for Teaching Assistants to Support Transformational Service-Learning
request for proposalS
Introduction
Full and part-time faculty from across Roosevelt University are invited to submit proposals to receive support to hire a teaching assistant to help them offer a transformational service-learning course during the Spring 2012 semester.
What is transformational service-learning?
Instructors who incorporate service-learning into their classes have students volunteer in the community in ways that closely relate to the course material. Instructors ensure that the volunteer work is meaningful and meets the needs of both the student and the site. Students then reflect on their service work and make connections to the class through assignments (such as journals, research papers, or other activities).
At Roosevelt, we also encourage instructors to explicitly address social justice through their service-learning. “Transformational service-learning” encourages students to participate in the university’s mission by allowing them to interact with underprivileged or socially marginalized people or in settings that serve these groups of people. Instructors who use transformational learning can also help students participate in civic or social action that focuses on ameliorating societal injustices.
Grant recipients -- and all faculty who use transformational service-learning -- can receive assistance and support by working with the Mansfield Institute. We are happy to help you find community placements for your students and to incorporate this approach into your teaching repertoire.
What is the nature of this grant?
Faculty members who receive this grant will be able to select and hire one teaching assistant for a class that they have been approved to teach during the Spring 2012 semester at Roosevelt University. This teaching assistant will be an undergraduate or graduate student who will provide 8 hours of assistance each week during the term. In addition, we encourage teaching assistants to start prior to the beginning of the Spring semester to help with the research and connections that will be important for syllabus development given the infusion of service-learning into the class.
Specifically, teaching assistants will assist faculty members with the service-learning component of their class. Their responsibilities may include tasks such as working with the Mansfield Institute to help students find community placements, coordinating with community partners, assisting with off-site travel or visits of community partners to campus, and evaluating students’ service-learning assignments with appropriate guidance and supervision. The MISJT will also work with and mentor teaching assistants to ensure that they understand transformational service-learning, the community partnership, and their role in the class. Instructors and teaching assistants should develop a clear understanding of the assigned responsibilities at the point of hire.
This teaching assistant grant will be especially helpful for those instructors who teach larger undergraduate classes, and who might otherwise feel challenged to incorporate transformational service-learning.
The student will receive a $2,000 scholarship to be applied to their Spring 2012 tuition at Roosevelt University as compensation for their work.
Finally, please note that this grant is primarily intended to support faculty members who have not already been awarded support for the Spring 2012 semester through the McCormick Tribune Foundation Transformational Service-Learning Grant Program. Faculty members who seek different forms of support to incorporate transformational service-learning into their classes (e.g., purchasing instructional materials, reimbursing travel expenses, incentives for community partners, etc.) can participate in our separate call for proposals for 2012-2013 which will be circulated in the Spring.
Proposal Timeline
The proposal application consists of the questions on the following page. Your responses should be submitted in an MS Word document that is sent as an attachment to Steven Meyers at by Tuesday, November 1, 2011. Applicants will be notified about the decisions regarding all proposals by Friday, November 18.
Please contact Steven Meyers at if you have any questions about transformational service-learning or the grant application. You can also visit the website of the Mansfield Institute for Social Justice and Transformation to learn more at http://misjt.blogspot.com/ and http://roosevelt.edu/MISJT/TransformationalLearning.aspx.
Grants for Teaching Assistants to Support Transformational Service-Learning
Directions: Please complete the form below and email it to Steven Meyers at . Answers should be typed directly under the questions.
Name of applicant:
College:
Department:
Email address:
Telephone number:
Course/section number and name:
1. In approximately 100 words, describe the course you will be teaching during the Spring 2012 semester and your learning objectives for the class. This text will be used for our list of transformational learning class.
2. Service-learning involves connecting your course material with related work in the community. Please describe your planned service sites (or the kind of sites you might be interested in and the Mansfield Institute will work with you to find the sites) for students. Describe what students can do there that connects with your course topics and goals. Remember that students’ work should also address the site’s needs to ensure a mutually beneficial relationship.
3. Transformational learning (TL), in particular, connects service-learning with Roosevelt’s social justice mission. Will your service-learning course or project do this and if so, how? Be sure to describe any specific actions your students will take to ameliorate injustice (e.g., advocacy work, create materials for a community partner, design a database or website, or hold a science fair).
4. One important ingredient in service-learning is student reflection. These assignments can take many different forms, such as journaling (see http://www.fiu.edu/~time4chg/Library/reflect.html), small group activities, large group discussion, experiential research papers, class presentations, essays, interviews with students about their experiences, or electronic student portfolios. Describe the reflection assignments you will use in your class.
5. Describe the responsibilities that you will assign to your teaching assistant. Remember that teaching assistants will assist faculty members with the service-learning component of their class for 8 hours per week during the Spring 2012 semester (in addition to several hours before the start of the semester to assist with course preparation).
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