Service Learning at Valencia Community College

Proposal Draft

Definition:

Service Learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection toenrich the learningexperience, teach civicresponsibility, andstrengthen communities.

Vision:Service Learning creates opportunities for Valencia students, faculty, and staff to learn in partnership with the community and to develop competencies that relate to course content and promote the advancement of a socially responsible citizenry.

Mission: Service Learning at Valencia Community College is an integral and enriching aspect of a student's education that fosters engagement with the larger community that furthers the academic and public purposes of the college.

Learning Outcomes:

  1. Students
  2. Skills
  3. Develop critical and creative thinking
  4. Develop teamwork/cooperative skills
  5. Communicate with people from diverse backgrounds
  6. Relate societal issues to course content
  7. Attitudes
  8. Develop moral ethical, civic, and social responsibility
  9. Gain empathy and multicultural understanding
  10. Increase self awareness, self efficacy, and appreciation of talents
  11. Behaviors
  12. Develop a project to meet a community need
  13. Implement the project
  14. Increase civic engagement
  15. Faculty
  16. Skills
  17. Link societal issues to curriculum
  18. Facilitate students’ service and reflection
  19. Attitudes
  20. Value SL as an academic tool to reach and surpass course outcomes
  21. Behaviors
  22. Use SL in a course
  23. College
  24. Skills
  25. Reach out community members
  26. Attitudes
  27. Value importance of community partners
  28. Behaviors
  29. Incorporate community partners in campus activities
  30. Community
  31. Skills
  32. Partner with the college
  33. Communicate needs to partners
  34. Attitudes
  35. Value the college as a partner
  36. Behaviors
  37. Participate in college activities

Service Learning Program Components

  1. A free standing course SLS 2940
  2. Students register from 1-4 credit hours, each credit equals 50 hours of service
  3. Supervised by a faculty advisor
  4. Evaluation—reflective journals and evaluations sheet developed by the internship placement office. Faculty member and placement agency conduct the evaluations
  5. Part of an Existing Course
  6. Optional for students in the class
  7. Students choose between a writing a paper and doing the service learning program
  8. Faculty member teaching the course sets requirements
  9. Number of hours
  10. Reflective component
  11. Evaluation—Faculty member sets criteria based on course goals and outcomes
  12. A Face-to-Face Lecture Community Involvement Course
  13. Curriculum to be approved by curriculum committee and assigned a course number
  14. The course would combines theory and practice of service
  15. Service Learning hours recorded on student transcript
  16. Faculty advisors of SLS 2940 and faculty teaching a course with a service learning component will monitor, collect, and turn in the forms for each student with total hours of service that semester to be recorded on the transcripts.
  17. Students can use the transcript to count hours toward scholarships, applications at universities etc.
  18. At 300 hours of service, students will receive special recognition (cord or similar) at graduation.

Levels of Service Learning

  1. Local Service Learning
  2. Students will serve the immediate community surrounding the college
  3. Often implemented from a list of local agencies who have expressed an interest in having college students work with them, but may be initiated by faculty or students.
  4. Usually done during the semester
  5. State/National Service Learning
  6. Students may travel to another part of the Florida or another state to serve.
  7. May be coordinated through national organizations
  8. Usually done during the breaks
  9. International Service Learning
  10. Students may travel to another country to serve.
  11. May coordinated through service abroad organizations or directly with the host country.
  12. Usually done during breaks

Recognition

  1. Students
  2. Students who complete 300 or more hours of service learning will be recognized at graduation by wearing a special chord and announced as being a service scholar
  3. Faculty
  4. Faculty will be recognized at Academic Assembly and Learning Day for their projects
  5. Faculty can apply for sabbatical and endowed chairs to carry out their service projects
  6. Community Partners
  7. Community partners will be invited to events to celebrate the partnership
  8. Valencia Community College
  9. VCC will be recognized by the community for its desire to give back to the local, state, and international community

Rationale for Implementing Service Learning at Valencia:

Service Learning Aligns with Valencia’s Vision, Mission, and Values

Valencia’s vision states that Valencia:

  1. Transforms lives. Service learning opens the mind of student to a whole new level of understanding of the community. The new level of understanding transforms the lives of the students.
  2. Strengthens the community. Service learning is one of the best ways to strengthen the community because it meets the needs of the community and empowers the community to meet their own needs.
  3. Inspires individuals to excellence. Service learning inspires students to the best that they can to help the community. By taking the learning outside of the classroom, students gain a whole new motivation to excel.

Valencia’s mission states that Valencia

  1. provides opportunities for academic, technical, and lifelong learning in a collaborative culture…Service learning epitomized a collaborative culture. The students work together with each other and with the community through service to meet the goals and outcomes of a particular course or to meet personal goals through independent service learning.
  2. is dedicated to inquiry, results, and excellence. Service learning opens the doors to a real world type of inquiry that is not possible in the classroom. Students identify the needs in the community and develop solutions to meet those needs. The results are beneficial for the student and the organization served. Excellence is the end result.

Valencia values

  1. Learning. Service learning is committed to each of the core competencies (see below) and develops student learning at the highest level.
  2. People. One of the best ways to show how Valencia values people is to serve others in the community and to create rich opportunities for growth the service for the students.
  3. Diversity. Through service learning, students learn to appreciate diversity as they work with people from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. They develop an understanding of the different situations and build relationships with these people and organizations.
  4. Access. Service learning is a great way to reach out to the community, increase awareness of Valencia’s services and invite others to learners to participate in learning.
  5. Integrity. Service learning not only respects the ideals of freedom, civic responsibility, and courage to act, it embraces and promotes these ideals. Through service students value freedom, participate in civic responsibility, and act to help community members.

Service Learning Aligns withthe Strategic Plan

Goal 2, Objective 2.1 Learning Outcomes

  1. Through service learning, students will have the opportunity to engage in authentic learning by applying the theoretical concepts learned in the classroom to the community as it exits around the college and around the world. This type of experience will enhance learning and engage students beyond anything that is possible within the confines of the classroom.

Goal 2, Objective 2.5 Close Achievement Gaps

  1. Research (list here) has shown that engaging in service learning helps to close the achievement gaps between students.

Goal 4, Objective 4.3 Community Engagement

  1. Through service learning, Valencia Community College will increase documented engagement with community organizations and business. Through service learning, Valencia Community College will contribute to meeting the community needs. The first step in service learning is identifying the community needs, followed by collaboration community members to meet those needs. The possibilities are endless.
  2. Through service learning, the community will be aware of Valencia Community College as an active contributor to the community. Organizations that may not have had contact with Valencia will learn about the mission and services provided by the college, which will raise our profile in the community.

Goal 4 Objective 4.3 Workforce Development

  1. Through service learning, many students undergo a shift in career plan as a result of the new experiences. Students become aware of new career options and begin to prepare for the new career through courses at Valencia. When they graduate, they are satisfied that Valencia has prepared them for the workforce.

Service Learning Supports General Education Outcomes

  1. Cultural and Historical Understanding: Demonstrate understanding of the diverse traditions of the world, and an individual’s place in it.
  2. International service learning fosters genuine understanding of diverse traditions of the world.
  3. Local service learning develops understanding of the different cultures in the area.
  4. Both types of service learning foster civic responsibility to meet the needs of the global and local community.
  5. Quantitative and Scientific Reasoning: Use processes, procedures, data, or evidence to solve problems and make effective decisions.
  6. Service Learning includes identifying a community need and through the analysis of data and evidence to devise a project to meet the needs of the community through problem solving.
  7. Communication Skills: Engage in effective interpersonal, oral, written communication.
  8. Through service learning, student need to communicate with community partners in both oral and written form.
  9. Ethical Responsibility: Demonstrate awareness of personal responsibility in one’s civic, social, and academic life.
  10. The foundation of service learning is to invoke the sense of civic and social responsibility.
  11. Information Literacy: Locate, evaluate, and effectively use information from diverse sources.
  12. Because of the nature of service learning, student need to use various resources to identify the nature of the problem. They use interviews, technology, and print materials in the research stage of service learning.
  13. Critical and Creative Thinking: Effectively analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and apply information and ideas from diverse sources and disciplines.
  14. In a service learning project, students need to meet community needs through the development of a service project. In order to identify the problem and possible solutions, students must analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and apply information and ideas from diverse sources and disciplines.

Service Learning Aligns with the Core Competencies

Think

Service learning requires students to analyze the ideas, principles and perspectives of the people and organizations they are working with and integrate ideas from the different disciplines in order to draw conclusion and come up with solutions to meet the community needs.

Value

Through service learning, students are exposed to new situations and begin to recognize the values of others and begin to distinguish personal, ethical, and cultural values. Students gain different cultural perspective on elevate their valued to incorporate a global or universal perspective.

Communicate

Through service learning, students learn to communicate with different audiences and for different purposes.

Act

Through service learning, students act purposefully, effectively, and responsibly. Students implement effective problem-solving, decision-making, and goal-setting strategies to meet the needs of the community. They learn to respond appropriately to their changing circumstances.

Requirements

Coordinator Position to

  1. Visit existing sites to ensure a safe, productive, learning environment
  2. Develop new sites within the community
  3. Train faculty
  4. Train students through class presentations
  5. Train community members about expectations/roles
  6. Serve as liaison between community needs and faculty to develop projects
  7. Develop materials
  8. Faculty handbook to include sample syllabi, projects…
  9. Community agreement and handbook
  10. Student handbook
  11. Compile list of locations from Volunteer Office, Internship Office, and SAGE
  12. Compile list of teachers doing SL
  13. Report to State
  14. Develop and maintain recognition/appreciation system for students, faculty, and community
  15. Collect, verify, and upload student service hours
  16. Develop the SOW course

Next Steps:

  1. Train faculty to incorporate service learning in their existing courses through Professional Development and Destination
  2. Promote service learning to the students.
  3. Include Service Learning in the catalog
  4. Alternative Ways to Earn Credit—Under the existing Service Learning heading, add the option to do service learning as part of a course and refer to the new description under Alternative Methods of Instruction
  5. Alternative Methods of Instruction—Add Service Learning as a possible part of a course. Explain that the hours will be accumulated on transcript for a special honor at 300 hours at the graduation.
  6. Set up Banner to record service learning hours
  7. Seek funding from grants organizations. See and