Wright State University's two-year student leadership program attracts students who are interested in developing a selfless yet influential leadership style characterized by commitment to others. It stresses skills and inner strength and the ability to lead by persuasion, not coercion. A leadership phase follows an initial service phase.…

Student volunteer work is now being designed to enrich their academic coursework. Volunteer administrators are being challenged to infuse volunteer student placements with opportunities for service learning. (SK)

Discusses the use of service learning as a way of enhancing student learning, especially in oral comprehension, conversation, and cultural understanding. Highlights a study of University of North Carolina-Asheville students who worked in the local health department, reporting the degree to which service learning helped them meet the American…

Explains how the concept of reciprocity in an arts-education model can radically change relations between universities and their surrounding communities. Describes the experiences of co-founding a Reciprocal University Arts Program by California State University Monterey Bay and local community groups, addressing the role of the arts, service…

Service learning can improve communities while preparing students for a lifetime of responsible citizenship. It helps students learn and develop through active participation in thoughtfully organized services that occur in and meet the needs of communities. Volunteering at a young age can lay the foundation for a lifelong commitment to community…

In a service-learning course, nursing students developed, implemented, and evaluated interventions to reduce risk factors and increase resilience of children and adolescents in impoverished communities. They collaborated with community agencies as well as with students from other disciplines. (Contains 24 references.) (SK)

Gives an overview of service learning at local, state, and federal levels. Describes national support networks and the work of the National Commission on Service Learning.(SK)

Describes the history of, rationale for, and implementation of a program at the University of Michigan to train peer facilitators in an undergraduate community service-learning program. Examples of specific training designs and component activities are provided. (EV)

Using a modified Solomon four-group design, 437 business students were divided into 6 treatment and 2 control groups. Treatments included service-learning lectures, service-learning projects, or lecture and project with and/or without pre and posttests. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated service learning treatments significantly affected…

Analysis of focus groups on service-learning experiences indicated that faculty and community organization staff differed in: (1) their commitment to the idea of expertise and their willingness to identify themselves as learners; (2) their attention to words or actions as evidence of learning; and (3) their tendency to represent learning as an…

Describes the Calvin Environmental Assessment Program (CEAP), which involves regular lab sessions or course projects to collect data that contribute to an overall environmental assessment of the campus and surrounding areas. Addresses the program's exploration of particularity versus universality in knowledge, and its Care Theory pedagogy. (EV)

Students in a course on the consumer in U.S. society (n=54) participated in service-learning projects. Pre- and posttest data showed improvement in student awareness of community needs, expectations of continued participation in job-related service, emotional satisfaction, and understanding of course concepts, issues, and themes. (SK)

Responses of 179 representatives of diverse institutions of higher education to a questionnaire on institutionalization of service learning found greater institutionalization occurred when institutions established a centralized office to coordinate activities, funded that office with university funds, located it under the chief academic office,…

Describes a program in which students in an adolescent development course were trained in a six-week group intervention aimed at building skills for positive communication, resolving differences, and preventing violence. (Author/CCM)

Evaluated the effects of infusing a 20-hour per semester service learning requirement into a large introductory child development course. Participating students outperformed previous classes; this advantage was apparently the result of stronger performances on narrative assessments (midterm and take-home final essays) and only manifested itself…