Information for Community Partners
The Service-Learning Program at Loyola
- Exploring Partnership with Loyola
- Model Service-Learning Activities
- Resources and Support for Community Partners
- Service-Learning Courses currently offered at Loyola (Fall 2008)
- Tips for Attracting and Training Experiential Learning Students
- Using Experience eRecruiting
Exploring Partnership with Loyola
Loyola works diligently to integrate the educational experience of our students into the community. We consider our community partners co-educators as the walls of the classroom extend into their agencies, and welcome their ongoing suggestions about new and/or improved ways to partner with Loyola students and faculty so as to better fulfill their ogranizations' missions and students' academic objectives.
Research has demonstrated numerous benefits of campus/community partnerships. Information about becoming a community partner is available on this website. To discuss expanding your current relationship with Loyola to include service-learning, contact Loyola's Service-Learning Coordinator.
Model Service-Learning Activities
There is no single way to “do” service-learning or structure a service-learning experience. The following four models of service activities offer some examples of how various agency missions, opportunities, and needs might interface with classroom learning objectives. It is by no means an exhaustive list, and should be used as a spur to community partners’, faculty members’ and students’ creativity.
Placement model: Individual students or groups of students choose from among several placements that have been chosen for their courses or suggested by Center for Experiential Learning staff and work at these sites for a few hours per week throughout the semester, depending on the course requirements and the needs of the service site. The service they provide is the conduit to their learning. They gain access to populations or issues related to their courses and, in return, provide needed assistance to organizations and/or their clientele. For example, students in an Intro to Sociology class might volunteer at a range of area social services agencies and reflect on their experiences in light of in-class discussions of historic and contemporary social problems.
Presentation model: Students in a course take material they are learning in class and create presentations for audiences in the community, usually young people. The service learners work in small groups and choose from among several sites, which have usually been set up by the course instructor in cooperation with the Center for Experiential Learning staff. Sometimes instructors require students to do their presentations more than once (to give them the chance to evaluate and make adjustments), or have them present in class before going out into the community. For example, students in a medieval studies class might teach a lesson on medieval verse forms to a high school creative writing class.
Product model: In some courses, service learners—working alone or in groups—produce a tangible result for their agencies, thus serving as “consultants” in response to agency-defined needs. For example, students in an enviromental studies class might do an environmental audit of an agency’s operations or facilities; students in an educational methods class might prepare a curriculum for a summer enrichment program serving students from struggling public schools; students in a computer science class might develop or modify a database for their agency clients.
Community Project model: Working in groups, service learners collaborate with community members to devise and implement a project. For example, service learners in a political science class might work with groups of middle or high school students to identify and develop an action campaign responding to local community issues affecting their school; art/design students might work with the clients of an area community health center to create a more welcoming and “healing” space.
Adapted from the Service Learning Program at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI
(B. Timberlake, et al., 2005).
Resources And Support for Community Partners
CEL's staff works with community partner organizations to clarify ways in which service learners can contribute to current agency objectives, identify relevant service-learning courses seeking placement/project sites, and engage Loyola faculty and students in conversation about potential opportunities with that organization.
CEL has collected many of its most important resources for community partners in its "Service-Learning Resource Manual for Community Partners" (PDF). This manual contains a community partner-focused explanation of service-learning and its benefits, a description of various models of service-learning, "best practices" guidelines for setting up service experiences, tips for conducting good student orientations, and copies of important documents used by the Service-Learning Program at Loyola.
- Contact CEL's Service-Learning Coordinator to cooperate with CEL's Service-Learning Program or to establish a new partnership with Loyola
- List of current Loyola service-learning courses (Fall 2008)
- Take ACTION! Community Partner Resource Guide - a descriptive, categorical list of current Loyola community partner organizations
- Other online resources for service-learning participants