Value of Volunteer Leadership for University Students Formerly Enrolled in Prescribed Reading: An Anti-Deficit Model

Abstract

Local volunteer opportunities hold the potential for university students to develop as leaders and engaged membersof the academic community, but students taking prescribed (sometimes termed developmental education) coursesmay be overlooked as candidates for these kinds of opportunities. Taking an anti-deficit stance, university faculty maypromote student success by recruiting students from prescribed courses to participate in carefully-designed volunteerprograms. In this qualitative case study, I explored the perceptions of growth in the areas of academic engagementand leadership and the motivation to participate in future community volunteer service in student volunteers who hadpreviously been enrolled in prescribed reading courses. Three such university student volunteers reflected on theirexperience as leaders in a short-term academic outreach program for high school students. In open-ended surveyand interview responses, the university volunteers described their development of specific skills as well as changesin self-perception. Their responses indicated that they perceived the volunteer experience as effectual in all theinvestigated areas. Notably, they reported that serving as role models for youth encouraged specific academic habits.The study includes descriptions of the academic outreach program with supporting theory for its design because thecontext of the volunteer service cannot be separated from the findings. This study is a unique contribution to studentsuccess literature—there is no previous model linking students from prescribed courses with community volunteeropportunities.