Post-Graduation Service and Civic Outcomes for High Financial Need Students of a Multi-Campus, Co-Curricular Service-Learning College Program

Abstract

High financial need Bonner scholarship alumni, who had been engaged in four years of cocurricular service and reflection experiences, were surveyed six years after graduation. Survey questions drawn from UCLA's Life After College Survey allowed comparison with three national groups. All Bonner service-learning program graduates were still doing community service six years after graduation compared to approximately two-thirds of each comparison group. Alumni were more also likely than comparison groups to be civically engaged, particularly in activities requiring dialogue. The importance of sustained dialogue across boundaries of perceived difference is discussed. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ he contribution of co-curricular and curricular service-learning to increasing the number of engaged citizens in the United States is relatively unexplored. Much of the available research on college-level service-learning has explored its effect on a variety of student outcomes for academic service-learning during the college years in a single course, and there are at least two large, multi-campus studies of curricular servicelearning

Pedagogical Tools to Enhance the Cognitive Skills of (Humanitarian) Design Engineers: The Rationale

“…69 For example, faculty and students who engage in collaboration with community-based entities to effect positive change while concurrently challenging engineering students in an academic setting have experienced learning outcomes benefiting students, faculty, educational institutions, and community partners 70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79 . Such service learning has proven so overwhelmingly successful that the Kellogg Commission concluded that it "should be viewed as among the most powerful of teaching procedures, if the teaching goal is lasting learning that can be used to shape student's lives around the world 80 ."…”

Assessing civic knowledge and engagement

“…Several skills associated with active citizenship were identified, among them dialogue, interpersonal perspective taking, and critical systematic thought. Further research by Keen and Hall (2008) found that "dialogue across difference" was the most critical skill in the development of civic commitments among young adults who were participants in the Bonner Scholar Program during college. Civic discourse and dialogue were also common skills identified by many of the participants in the IUPUI Symposium on Assessing Civic Outcomes (Keen, 2010).…”

“…The Bonner Foundation' s Bonner Scholars Program is a co-curricular program that supports fouryear community service scholarships for students attending twenty-seven colleges and universities. A number of program evaluations demonstrate that there are multiple benefi ts for students, faculty, and community partners (Keen and Hall, 2008). Infl uenced by a pivotal fi nding in earlier research (Daloz, Keen, Keen, and Parks, 1996), civic discourse is repeatedly woven into this program to foster civic engagement in adulthood.…”

“…Infl uenced by a pivotal fi nding in earlier research (Daloz, Keen, Keen, and Parks, 1996), civic discourse is repeatedly woven into this program to foster civic engagement in adulthood. The Bonner Scholar Program is a cohort-based model that includes ongoing opportunities for interaction with others and dialogue across difference, and this is the component of the program that students report to be most valuable (Keen and Hall, 2008). On our own campus, we have designed the Sam H. Jones Community Service Scholarship Program to support the involvement of students in educationally meaningful service experiences (Hatcher, Bringle, Brown, and Fleischhacker, 2006).…”

Engineering Service Learning with Green Information Technology and Systems Projects

“…There is a vast amount of literature that supports SL outcomes being positive for students, faculty, educational institutions, and community partners [4][5] [6]. Service learning has a positive impact on students' academic learning, course objective development, moral development and ability to apply academic knowledge to "real world" applications [7] [8]. Students are therefore the largest benefactors as they gain increased motivation, better academic outcomes and real world experience [6] Service Learning projects can be classified as: 1) collaborations with a community group or non-profit organization to provide specific engineering design or construction around a specific need, or 2) an internship-like experience with industry in which students provide solicited work for a client.…”