Community-Based Learning at Valparaiso University: Achievements and Opportunities
CITAL Guest Blogger: Elizabeth Lynn, Director of the Institute for Leadership and Service
If you read university press releases, you may have noticed that Valparaiso University consistently earns a spot on the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. In 2013 Valpo even received distinction, an honor conferred on only 100 institutions nationwide that year–and in 2014 we outdid ourselves yet again, achieving distinction in three honor roll categories: General Community Service, Education, and Economic Opportunity.
What makes Valpo such an overachiever in the area of community service (our Lutheran identity aside)? One reason is the widespread use of community-based learning by Valpo faculty. In 2013-2014, according to data collected by the Institute for Leadership and Service and the Office of Volunteer Programs, Valpo students did more than 260,000 hours of service and service-learning. Just over one-third (96,000) of these hours went into non-credit-bearing service activities undertaken by individual students (that sophomore who regularly treks over to Cafe Manna to serve food or to Hilltop Neighborhood House to tutor kids), or through student organizations (Biology Club’s river restoration work, VU’s annual Day of Caring, or Engineers Without Borders’ spring break trip to Haiti). But the remaining 160,000 of those service hours went into community-based learning activities embedded in credit-bearing courses. What were some of those community-based learning activities–and why might you want to build them into your own course to deepen student learning?
According to the Glossary of Education Reform, Community-based learning refers to “a wide variety of instructional methods and programs that educators use to connect what is being taught in schools to their surrounding communities, including local institutions, history, literature, cultural heritage, and natural environments.” Defined thus, community-based learning is a much more capacious term than service-learning. Whereas service learning focuses on the experience of serving others, community-based learning emphasizes community connections and relationships that extend beyond service to mutual learning and exchange.
At VU, a great deal of what counts as community-based learning takes place through required field work, practica, clinicals and/or internships for majors in Business, Nursing and Health Professions, Engineering, Education, Communications and more . But, increasingly, individual faculty are also building creative community-based learning elements into their courses. To name just three examples from the past academic year:
- English 396, “Traditions of Giving and Serving in American Life,” engaged students both in reading American literature about philanthropy and in acting philanthropically, by giving $10,000 in grants to Porter County area non-profit organizations with funds provided through the Learning by Giving Foundation.
- History 492, “Hands on History: Civil Rights in Our Own Backyard,” engaged students in original research on the history of civil rights in northwest Indiana, culminating in several public events and an exhibit (now open) at the Porter County Museum in downtown Valparaiso.
- Sociology 380: “Rethinking Crime, Justice, and Behavior from the Inside Out,” brought together Valparaiso University students and incarcerated students for a transformative, collaborative inquiry into issue of crime, justice, and behavior that took place inside Westville Correctional Facility.
By using the community as a classroom in these and other creative ways, VU faculty can help our students learn from and contribute to the wisdom embedded in our community institutions and neighbors, achieving insights and understandings essential to future leadership and service. And these achievements are surely even greater, for all concerned, than earning that spot on the President’s Honor Roll each year.
For further insight into community-based learning approaches, check out these journals with the latest information and ideas, or stop by and visit the Institute for Leadership and Service in the Helge Center. We would love to talk to you.