Request for Nominations:
Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
Service-Learning Awards
Highlights:
- Five (5) awards are available to recognize and honor faculty who have demonstrated excellence in understanding and incorporation of Service-Learning into existing courses. Award Recipients will receive $500.00 in honor of their achievement.
- This award program signifies the University’s recognition of the time and effort involved in meaningful but labor-intensive pedagogies like service-learning. The program seeks to honor faculty recipients in addition to serving as a catalyst for the increased use and recognition of service-learning at St. Cloud State University.
Purpose:
Service-learning is a pedagogy that brings theory and practice together, allowing students to use and reinforce acquired knowledge while working for the good of their communities. Service-Learning has been demonstrated to positively impact student learning, as well as to enhance students’ sense of social responsibility and commitment to service while reducing stereotypes and facilitating cultural and racial understanding. Students who participate in service-learning report having stronger relationships with faculty and are more likely to be happy with their college experience; they thus exhibit higher retention rates and a greater likelihood of graduating than students who are never exposed to service-learning. Institutions report that service-learning improves community-university relationships. Additionally, service-learning provides meaningful and much-needed expertise to community agencies.
This award program, designed to promote and reward the use of service-learning at SCSU, builds on a growing strength indicated in the NSSE data and is responsive to themes in the University’s Strategic Plan regarding academic distinction (Goal A), University Community Relations (Goal B), and Diversity and Social Justice (Goal B).
Program Description:
CETL will distribute up to five (5) awards of $500 each to successful faculty nominees.
Nominations will be reviewed by the CETL Small Grants Committee which will be composed of CETL Director Frankie Condon, Service-Learning Coordinator Christopher Bineham, two members of the CETL Advisory Board, and one community representative.
Nomination Guidelines:
SCSU defines service-learning as follows:
“Service-learning is a credit bearing, educational experience
in which students participate in organized service activity that
meets identified community needs and reflects on the service activity
in such a way as to gain further understanding of course content,
a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of
civic responsibility.”
Robert Bringle & Julie Hatcher, Office of Service Learning, Indiana
University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Given this definition of service-learning, nominations should account for the following components:
- Project courses have been credit bearing: For the purposes of the university, there is a credit-based incentive attached to service-learning.
- Project courses have been redesigned to include organized service activity: Activities were planned and organized with community partners so that there was a deliberate relationship connecting the service opportunity with course material.
- Project courses were redesigned to meet identified community needs: Projects met need(s) identified by community partners. Projects did not attempt to create a need for the results of service-learning. Instead, projects assisted organizations with needs they already had. Communication with community partners was continuous and productive.
- Project courses were redesigned to include the opportunity for student reflection: Time was spent specifically on reflecting and analyzing the volunteer experience in relation to course content and personal experience.
- Project courses were redesigned such that service-learning connected with and informed course content: Service was integrated into the course as a tool used to reach course goals.
- Project courses were redesigned to encourage civic responsibility, exploring the social connections to scholarly research and academic exploration.
How to Nominate a Candidate:
Complete the CETL Service-Learning Award Nomination Form and return
the form to the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning,
Miller Center 310 by March 15, 2006.
Awards will be distributed during the Faculty Luncheon at Faculty Forum Day, April 5, 2006.
Please contact Christopher R. Bineham, Service-Learning Coordinator/AmeriCorps member, with any questions, at crbineham@stcloudstate.edu or at 308-3898.
