URBS 230—Community Leadership and Service Learning

Service Learning

“Service learning”—learning that begins in the classroom and moves out to the community—has taken on many different meanings; most of them come back to the elements of learning by doing, doing “in service” to the community, and reflecting—thinking about—what one has been doing. In the process, we hope that service learning will foster the values of civic responsibility and voluntary activity. You should look at some of the national websites for service learning, as well as MSU’s own initiative.

URSI has always stressed the application of knowledge in most of our courses; besides, “service learning” is part of the title for this course. So, as you might expect, there will be a heavy dose of it in this course.

You have the opportunity in this course to learn more about community leadership as it is practiced. You must identify a nonprofit organization in your community that can use at least 30 hours of your time over the course of the semester (that’s about 3 hours a week). If nothing comes immediately to mind, you might look at the Greater Mankato Area Chamber of Commerce’s website for their “Organization List”. There are a few rules for selecting your service learning site:

They must be a nonprofit organization
They must be able to identify at least 30 hours of activity that will occur over the next 15 weeks.
They must be willing that you will be studying them while you are volunteering there, and you must have a mentor at the site—someone who has been there a while, who would be willing to answer all the “rookie” questions you are going to be asking.
You must be able to attend a meeting of the Board of the Directors of the organization by week 6 of the course (since you will be drawing on that experience for some of the writing you will be doing).

By the third week of class, you must send me an e-mail with the particulars about your service-learning site—the name & address of the organization, the name & phone number of your mentor, and the nature of your duties with the organization.

By the last week of regular class, you must submit to your writing group a reflective essay addressing the question, “What did your service learning experience teach you about community leadership?” The essay should be at least 5 pages long. As part of your essay, you might want to consider such questions as:

What were the “key moments” that you observed, those moments when the people you were working with or observing had a choice to make?
To what extent did the people you worked with or observed draw on theory? Even if they weren’t aware of it, were they using “theory-in-action”? If not, what did they use to guide their decisions and actions?
What happens to theory when it gets taken to the streets? How were the theories you have been studying carried out in the practice you observed? Were there events where the practice contradicted the theory?
What did you learn from practice that was not in the theories at all?
What does the future hold for the organization as it addresses changing community needs? What strategies are being adopted to address change? What resources will be needed to achieve those strategies?

What are the ethical issues associated with private or public participation in your organization?

The final draft of this paper is due by the date on the Course Calendar in exam week.

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