This study sought to examine how service-learning and student volunteer opportunities shape educational experiences for students by surveying 437 students currently enrolled in service-learning courses from nine participating Florida Campus Compact institutions. The researchers found several predictors that impacted student perceptions of their…

Professional advocacy is central to the counselor's professional identity and is essential for counselors to maintain the privilege of serving clients. Despite CACREP requirements for programs to provide training in professional advocacy, counseling students may need more training in this area. This quantitative study examined professional…

Background: Social responsibility and democratic citizenship are essential outcomes of a college education. Yet limited research has examined how college experiences may relate to students' moral and prosocial development, qualities that ground responsibility and citizenship. Purpose: This research sought to identify the college experiences,…

How is required public service during college related to later civic behavior? This article reports findings from a survey of 359 alumni, conducted two years after they completed their undergraduate studies at Tulane University. The alumni held positive views of the substantial public service requirement they had completed before graduating and…

This quantitative study explored how campus environments affected the development of students' capacities to take others' perspectives seriously. Data were collected from over 10,000 students at 15 institutions using the Personal and Social Responsibility Inventory (PSRI) to examine the relationships between individual and institutional factors…

Given the decline in political engagement among the electorate, especially among youth, there has been an effort to increase engagement through service-learning courses at both the high school and college levels. The research that exists regarding the effects of these courses on students is mixed. Some studies show that students become more…

Underrepresented students have been identified as being less likely to attain a college degree than their majority counterparts. Experiential pedagogies, specifically service-learning (SL), offer students an opportunity to engage in community work and improve skills that might contribute to their educational success in college. The present study…

One of the most frequently touted benefits of higher education is the opportunity to interact with people different from oneself, yet these interactions do not automatically lead to positive outcomes. The purpose of this study is to explore how one particular context for diversity interactions, service-based alternative break programs, may provide…

University students who were required to engage in academic public service during college were surveyed just before completion of their undergraduate studies. Views of the graduation requirement remained positive, as they had been at college entry and after two years of study. Civic attitudes, knowledge, and skills were quite stable over four…

Psychological sense of community (PSOC) is a construct that may facilitate social action in university students. Similarly, a social justice-focused university mission statement might also facilitate social action and interest. The current study investigated whether psychological sense of community, agreeing with the mission statement, and taking…

The purpose of this study is to explore the extent to which the characteristics of public administration degree programs are related to public service motivation (PSM) using a higher education socialization framework. Using a sample of approximately 500 students enrolled in 26 Master's degree programs across the country, this study confirms that…

Within the fields of kinesiology and physical education teacher education, there is a growing number of courses and curricula that utilize service-learning as a pedagogical strategy. However, these courses and curricula are often constructed, implemented, and evaluated without a strong framework based on literature in the field, which has led to…

Little research exists on the development of compassion among college undergraduates. This study tracks changes in compassion and identifies factors associated with these changes over the course of undergraduate students' college careers, from the time of admittance to the time of graduation. Compassion levels assessed at the point of college…

Volunteering is often touted as a method to educate college students about social justice by providing students with an opportunity to apply classroom knowledge in a real-world setting. However, many critics have noted that service does not necessarily lead to social justice outcomes and that some forms of service may reinforce students'…

The purpose of the authors' research was to create a tool to evaluate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) literacy in service-learning projects. The researchers posited that components of service-learning, which in this case included the deliverable and reflections, are examples of fundamental STEM literacy and thus can be…