Episode 7: Service Learning

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Doug:Welcome to Talkngstock, I'm your host Doug Harvey director of the Institute for Faculty Development at Stockton University. Talkingstock is a space where colleagues can discuss teaching, scholarship and service. This week’s topic is service learning and here’s today’s faculty guest.

Donna:Hello, my name is Donna Albano. I am a faculty member in the School of Business, specifically hospitality and tours and management studies.

Doug:Donna, thanks for joining us. I want to just start by asking you in plain terms how you find service learning for yourself as a faculty member?

Donna:Service learning, for me as a faculty member, is just simply the fact that students—it’s important for me that students be engaged in the community. And particularly in our major, hospitality and tourism management studies; it is a community, a large community here in Atlantic County. And I think it’s important that, not only are they learning the theory in a textbook as it relates to that industry, but that they’re meeting the people and engaged in the community that’s actually applying the practice. That’s the best way I could put that.

Doug:And so then what does it look like when you’re teaching? I mean how do you change your course to incorporate service learning?

Donna:Great, so it’s easy for me, because the subject matter is all directly related to what’s going on in the community every single day. So if I'm teaching about restaurants, or hotels, or marketing or tourism, it’s so easy to just pick real live examples. Good and bad, working, non-working, you know struggling, corporate and entrepreneurial, in any facet it can be found. So from my standpoint, I'm incredibly engaged in the community. And it makes it easy to just find really applicable examples every single day that I can take something that’s being taught theoretically in a book and apply it in realistic terms to the student.

Doug:So how do the students, then, experience it?

Donna:So, it could be something like in a marketing class where the Mays Landing Merchants Association is having a food and wine festival. And they need better marketing ideas. They want to reach another generation. They need fresh ideas for the festival itself. They are challenged with ticket sales. It could be any number of things. So I may hear this in some other meeting, out in the industry or from a colleague and offer the opportunity for the students to take a look at that from a project-based perspective. And often invite the community member into the class to do the overview as a guest speaker. And then if they agree to have the students take on the project, they come at the end to see the final presentation of the students.

So we create some missions and objectives of what the community member might need. And at the end, we present those to the entity, whatever it may be.

Doug:Interesting. So how do you then make the connection to the outside organization or to this [BOM]? Is there a trick to that?

Donna:It’s kind of grassroots really. I mean, most people are really willing to accept the help, especially at the price we’re charging, which is nothing. So to have a marketing plan done. To have a fresh set of millennial eyes on their business strategy or their social media strategy. I can just think of a bunch of examples that we’ve recently done. I mean, our local business, the Renault Winery came to us to ask students about golf strategies and how to market golf in off-season times and what other uses could the golf course be used for. And so the students really —so part research, part creativity and then of course on the backend, they’re learning how to do a [squad] analysis. And what it means to present professionally to a community member and things like that. So they don’t even—

Doug:- [Squad] analysis.

Donna:Is a strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. So they can take a look, and that’s part of the marketing class, so that might be a theoretical chapter. But then I'm actually having them apply it to a real-life case study.

Doug:How the students react to having to do that?

Donna:Yeah, you have to—well you have to warm them up a little bit. So some students right point blank will say, “You know I'm not from here. I'm not from around here. I don’t even know what that is or what that means.” But it’s a constant cultivation, so there’s so many resources now. So we’re reviewing the website, like I said, the speaker may come in; we’ll take a trip to the place, there’s a number of ways. And then before you know it, they’re pretty engaged. I mean, they’re pretty—they realize that what they’re going to be doing, could potentially have an impact or even a change in the way a business practice may be done, based on what they’ve researched and report on.

Doug:So, most important lesson that you’ve learned from implementing service learning? Is there anything that you’ve come across where you think okay next time I'm not going to do that?

Donna:Oh, so maybe a not—well I think these student—this particular generation, and I’ve been teaching along time, needs lots of structure. So they’re looking for that. What kinds of questions should I ask? Do you need that typed up? Should—am I allowed to call them? When is that due? Will this be on the test? Those kinds of things. So I found that things that don’t work well are the things that leave them with way too much freedom to make—not to make decisions, but to not be guided in exactly. Maybe what the partner wants or technically what I want, quite frankly, so as an end result. So the challenges are providing enough structure that it’s a good product, but loose enough framework that they can be free to really explore all of the opportunities.

I mean, some students will just get in the car and go to the destination. Or come up with a creative idea to survey people, or customers or other golfers in the case of the Renault Winery. So you know I want to leave the freedom, but again with too much freedom leaves them sometimes paralyzed quite frankly, in my experience.

Doug:So how do you get around that paralysis? What are some of your strategies on that?

Donna:Just lots of communication. I'm not going to kid you that it would be easier just to walk in and who your PowerPoints and give a test and leave. I mean it would be easier, because I'm building this bridge and so what happens is I'm metering out some of the information that the students gather to the community partner. The community requires getting back to me and saying, “Yeah, but,” or “Could you ask,” or, “That’s great,” and so you’re this intermediary. So it’s really using the technology that we have here, whether it’s a blackboard site or a Google shared drive. Or even a Google—you know when you can get in the community. I'm losing the—you can be like a circle, like a circle conversation for students to engage in, when we’re not in class.

So there’s this shared sense of information and we’re trying not to duplicate things and things like that. So, the challenges are many and there’s a lot of work involved. So—there’s a lot of work involved, honestly. But just staying on top of it. Providing that structure and maybe continually tweaking whatever it is that you give them, that’s part of the thing they don’t like. Is that it’s not always defined, like the end-product isn’t always going to be what we started out to do. So—and they get—they’re like huffing and puffing about that because that’s not what—that’s not where we spoke—said we were going to do in the beginning or something like that. But the fact of the matter is it evolved because the need or something that you discovered, so I think that that’s some of the challenges.

Doug:The real work’s messier than class.

Donna:Right, sure. Than—

Doug:- The book says this is how it’s supposed to go down, but when you actually try to do that, so they’re getting that experience without having to wait until they’re actually out in the work world.

Donna:Right, and the reward for me is that I see these students again later in a career development class and we create portfolios. And so they’re putting these real live experiences on their resume, in their portfolio. They’re keeping the end-product, which is the presentation or whatever, some people have done videos, whatever the case may be. So for me that’s the real—that they can—they’re actually really realizing that they can use that in a job interview on their resume as a tangible product of their work.

Doug:Have you heard anything back from alum’s that have gone through this experience and how it helped them?

Donna:Sure we’ve a pretty close relationship with a lot of our alumni and quite frankly it lands students jobs, and opportunities and further networking. So this is a student who did marketing last semester, now works two days a week for this particular company. And now this company wants to get involved with something else here at Stockton. And the student ends up being the liaison for that, really, really rewarding for me. And there’s a couple of those instances.

Doug:That’s powerful learning experience.

Donna:I think so.

Doug:You wouldn’t get otherwise.

Donna:And I already know that this particular employer wants to keep this student. I think this student’s onto some really big things. But let the employer try, I mean, that’s great, they can try. Because he ended up being a real grassroots—it was a very entrepreneurial project.

Doug:Great. So if somebody—if another faculty member came to you and ask how to start into service learning work, where would you send them? Or what would you tell them to do?

Donna:The first thing I would ask them is, what’s your own personal network look like? Because to do it for a stranger or something that you’re not connected to personally, I think becomes harder. Just—it may feel like one more task or one more student, for me, I would think. So it would be something personal to you that has a connection to your profession, to your teaching, to something you’re doing in the classroom, that’s where I would say start. But there’s needs, all kinds of needs out there, I think in the community.

Doug:Yes, I think I’ve seen that as well. I think that’s—there’s no dearth of opportunity, I think, to set up a service learning opportunity for students. It’s a matter of just having connections, taking the time then to have that connection.

Donna:And we engage students—it doesn’t have to be classroom specific. I mean, we have a lot of—there’s a travel industry conference coming to Atlantic City at the end of this week. And they’ll ask our students to help man one of the tables. Or help with registration. Or there’s a big festival in April that they ask our students to come volunteer. And they’ll certify—there’s a TIF certification that’s involved. And then they reward them financially with some money that I take directly and put into their school account, it’s not like a payment. So it’s win/win.

Doug:Interesting. I have a section here called stock tips, which is a chance for people to find out more about the topic. So are there any resources that people could go to that you know of for service learning or for starting into these types of off-campus opportunities for students?

Donna:I don’t have any formal resources. But I know we have a great resource here on campus in our service learning office. And I know that they have a repository of organizations that are constantly looking for students to assist in some way, shape or form. Like I said, there’s no lack of need from our community on a number of things. But I am very specific to connecting our industry, our logo has to tie towards some industry to what the students are learning in our classrooms. So mine’s pretty specific. But there’s plenty of resources in the service learning world, for sure.

Doug:Okay. Thank you for joining me today, Donna. If somebody wants to reach out and learn more or contact you about this—

Donna:Sure.

Doug:Could they do that online?

Donna:Sure, the—I mean the one—the Stockton home page, you can—under contacts, Donna Albano.

Doug:Thank you very much.

Donna:Thanks, Doug.

Doug:Talkingstock is a podcast produced by me, Doug Harvey, for the Institute for Faculty Development at Stockton University. Visit our website or you can find the link to show notes and transcripts for every episode. The music for talkingstock is provided by the Organic Music Library, Thank you for listening.