V. INTELLECTUAL CLIMATE AND EDUCATION FOR CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY:
SERVING TO LEARN AND LEARNING TO SERVE
OBJECTIVES
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has an opportunity to create a national model in the field of service learning and community-based learning by building on its proud tradition of public service. Earlier in this century, UNC-CH President Edward Kidder Graham proclaimed that the boundaries of the University are coterminous with those of the state, which means that the practical problems of North Carolina are the problems of the campus. Faculty, students, alumni, and staff, over the years, have studied those problems and have worked to solve them -- often inspired by campus leaders like President Frank Porter Graham -- and their efforts have yielded impressive results. At the same time, however, formidable barriers have prevented Carolina from fulfilling its potential for meaningful and enduring service.
This committee believes that a relatively modest investment in service learning will eliminate many of those barriers and produce enormous benefits for students, staff, faculty, and the state. Thus we seek to improve the intellectual climate by recommending ways both to increase the number and quality of opportunities for service learning and community-based learning and to encourage faculty to integrate community-based learning into their teaching, courses, and research.
BACKGROUND: THE IMPORTANCE OF SERVICE IN BUILDING THE ENGAGED CAMPUS
A new generation of University leaders has urged its constituents to become engaged in the lives and problems of their communities -- to address more vigorously the issues surrounding campus and community collaboration. While universities nationally have been "reaching out into their most troubled neighborhoods with initiatives that involve faculty, graduate students and undergraduates," Triangle universities have been criticized for not working on social issues significantly affecting the future success of our community. Carolina's responsibility to the community begins at its front gate, and our front gate is the entire state.
UNC-CH should take its place at the front of this national service movement. A core group of students, staff, and faculty is prepared to lead the way if given the necessary encouragement and support. Many of the service learning programs at universities have been started by undergraduates, who forged partnerships between campuses and communities. Student organizations at universities also sponsor many other types of community service activities. At UNC-CH, for example, the Campus Y, a department of Student Affairs and a recognized student organization, has provided a range of service opportunities for students in successfully carrying out its mission -- "the pursuit of social justice through the cultivation of pluralism." But as a student-based organization, there are limits to the support Campus Y can provide for a growing service program intended to integrate faculty and curriculum into the provision of service learning experiences. Now is the time for this University to make a sustained and transforming commitment to improve North Carolinians' lives by working in their communities.
Evidence demonstrates that service learning and other community-based learning benefit the intellectual lives of students and the communities in which they serve. A 1995 survey in Academic Affairs conducted by the Public Service Roundtable found that UNC-CH faculty incorporated service learning into their courses because it:
· allows students to make meaningful contributions to the community.
· enhances learning by enabling students to apply real-life experiences to the classroom, and classroom learning to real-life problems.
· solves problems identified by the community through partnerships with faculty, students, staff and alumni.
· promotes civic duty and builds citizenship.
· enhances self-knowledge and self-esteem.
· develops career goals and creates career options.
The Public Service Roundtable survey also revealed that community-based learning carries benefits for faculty. It enables them to take down the classroom walls that divide the University from the community; provides them with rich opportunities for new research; encourages interdisciplinary partnerships; and permits direct collaboration with communities needing faculty members' expertise. North Carolina expects UNC-CH to help solve its most pressing problems -- poverty, racism, illiteracy, violent crime, drugs -- and it is our moral and legal responsibility, as the state's premier public university, to do so.
BARRIERS TO SERVICE AND COMMUNITY BASED LEARNING
Faculty, students, and staff are generally enthusiastic about expanding opportunities for service at Carolina. They recognize the need and they understand the benefits for themselves and for the state. At the same time, there are barriers that prevent us from increasing service learning and community-based learning and from building effective partnerships that meet community-identified needs.
1. Fragmentation and Lack of Coordination. Faculty, students, and staff are already engaged in various kinds of service, but there is no mechanism for coordinating those activities. Consequently, service activities at UNC-CH are fragmented. For example, at least 45 UNC-CH faculty offer service learning courses, but they are not listed in any one place. Similarly, many departments offer credit internships, but there is no system for tracking which departments have them or what the internships involve. Faculty, students, and staff find it difficult to initiate interdisciplinary collaboration involving service because they have no reliable means of knowing what others are doing. Student organizations face similar barriers. Although there are examples of pan-University coordinated service (such as the clean-up effort after Hurricane Fran), student organizations seldom coordinate service activities with each other, often resulting in duplication of effort. We need to provide a centralized resource center where all members of the University community can learn about service activities, service learning courses, and public service initiatives.
2. Lack of Information. Lack of information is especially frustrating for the broader community. Community members know that faculty and organizations on campus can help them, but they generally have no idea what services are available. Community leaders have identified the main problems as lack of a centralized gateway to the University and lack of continuity by campus groups in providing service. The director of an important community service agency described the University as "very confusing" to community agencies in need of help. ("Who do you talk to? Who's in charge?") In any given semester, some community agencies that need volunteers have none at all, while other agencies are inundated.
3. Incentives and Rewards. Campuses that are most successful in integrating service with academic study are those where service is a "broadly understood and accepted mission"; the least successful are those where "there is not a commonly ... accepted mission," or "where the plan is inconsistent with the [perceived] mission." At UNC-CH, we have the stated triple missions of research, teaching, and service. It is an unfortunate reality, however, that service -- to the University, to students, to the community -- too often seems to be the least valued of the three.
The University culture rarely rewards service, particularly in Academic Affairs, and service is unlikely to be an important consideration in hiring, promotion, tenure and salary decisions. In fact, departments routinely discourage junior tenure-track faculty members from pursuing service until tenure, because it may interfere with research productivity. A number of our colleagues would like to develop service learning courses or other service collaborations with the community, but they do not do so because the professional risks are simply too great. The faculty will continue to view service as an "invisible mission" until the University treats service as a serious and tangible counterpart to teaching and research; conversely, faculty members will become involved in community-based learning activity "if such activity is rewarded in promotion and other personnel decisions." UNC-CH must recognize, reward, and encourage contributions to public service just as it rewards and encourages good teaching and good research. Similarly, students need greater support from the University to expand their involvement in service learning courses and in community-based learning. They need a variety of support services, including transportation, training, access to telephones and copying machines, computers and supplies, and fellowships and awards.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Create a Pan-University Center for Public Service.
Along with teaching and research, service is a key element in the mission of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Support for both teaching and research is already institutionalized at UNC-CH; institutional support for service learning has lagged behind. Other universities have adopted a range of community-based service models, from public service centers to specialized projects focusing on one aspect of community-based learning. The committee is familiar with these models, and we have visited a few of them, including those at Stanford, University of Utah, and Providence College. Based on our investigations, we conclude that a pan-University public service center is superior to other possible structures for service; it is by far the best model to reduce the problems associated with fragmentation and isolation, to improve coordination, and to broaden access to service learning and community-based service. Its creation will visibly demonstrate a serious commitment by the University to transforming its service mission; it will enable us to increase, expand, and support service, service learning, and community-based learning at UNC-CH.
The core features of a public service center -- clearly defined responsibilities, a centralized location, a full-time staff capable of coordinating and developing new and tested opportunities, and its service as a gateway between the community and all divisions and schools on campus -- will enable UNC-CH to remove many of the barriers to effective collaboration with the community. A public service center will:
· Coordinate existing activities and programs.
The center will coordinate and facilitate existing public service activities at UNC-CH, including service learning, internships, and other community-based learning activities; provide a comprehensive database of community-identified service needs, campus service activities, and interests of students, faculty, staff and alumni; serve as the entry point and gateway for community members seeking public service collaboration with students, faculty, staff and alumni through a toll-free telephone number, an Internet website, a comprehensive database, and coordinated, screened referrals; continually assess the need for support services, such as transportation, access to technical support, and training, and provide them to faculty, students, and staff in existing service programs; and provide a home, with administrative and technical support, for campus organizations whose primary mission is community service.
· Develop new service learning opportunities.
The center will serve as an incubator for new service projects, innovative partnerships, and interdisciplinary collaborations; provide a facility for the training of students, faculty, community members, and staff; develop new public service financial programs and administer service fellowships, awards, and grants; and develop inter-university collaborations with Duke, NCCU, other area universities, and other universities in the UNC system to address community-identified problems, both locally and statewide.
· Publicize and promote service learning.
The center will promote public service through seminars, workshops, conferences, and community events and advocate for community-based initiatives and volunteerism; develop public service peer and career counseling, in coordination with existing career counseling services, for students interested in careers in public service; produce service-related publications and encourage research and writing in the area of service; and provide support to faculty, giving validity and credibility to service initiatives and thus increasing community-based learning endeavors by faculty.
A public service center that supports and coordinates these functions will strengthen student intellectual growth, scholarship, and the quality of student life. It will combine academic learning with service, provide an environment that supports student initiatives and leadership, and teach students the skills and knowledge necessary to be effective participants in community affairs.
The committee strongly recommends that the public service center serve both graduate and undergraduate students, and it is vital that Health Affairs play a strong role. Without graduate students, many collaborations with communities, especially those addressing health issues, will not be possible. In addition, there are exciting opportunities for partnerships between faculty in Health Affairs and undergraduate students in Academic Affairs. Successful collaborations among Health Affairs, Student Affairs, and Academic Affairs, as well as within divisions, are crucial to long-term partnerships that will benefit the entire state.
Proposed Administrative Structure
1A. We recommend immediate establishment of the center with the recognition that it will develop and expand in the years to come. To facilitate the establishment of the center and the design of its administrative structure, the Chancellor should appoint a Planning Committee, to be chaired by a faculty member and composed of alumni, community members, students, staff, and faculty. Relationships of existing service organizations with any new public service center will be complex and should be determined initially by the Provost upon the advice of this Planning Committee.
1B. Based on the recommendations of the Planning Committee, the Director of the Center should be appointed by the Chancellor and should report directly to the Provost; the Director should have academic credentials. This reporting relationship offers an opportunity to develop the center as a bridge connecting Academic Affairs, Health Affairs and Student Affairs for purposes of service learning and community-based learning.
1C. One of the Center's purposes is to enhance communication between the different divisions and schools and to encourage collaboration. The Center staff should therefore include a secretary and three coordinators to facilitate cross-campus interactions: a half-time coordinator for Health Affairs, who would work with the Director of Interdisciplinary and Community Based Learning in Health Affairs; a coordinator of service learning for Academic Affairs; and a coordinator of community-based learning for Student Affairs.
1D. An Advisory Board chaired by a faculty member and composed of faculty, students, staff, and community members should also be created, and appointed as soon as practicable by the Provost. This Advisory Board will provide ongoing oversight of the Center and advice to the Director.
2. Increase Support for Successful, Existing Service and Community-Based Learning Programs.
As stated in UNC-CH's Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Re-Accreditation Report in 1995, the University must increase support for existing programs and organizations that have successfully provided needed service to communities. There are a number of organizations across the University, from the SHAC Medical Clinic (staffed by Health Affairs volunteers) to CommUniversity, a.p.p.l.e.s, and the Campus Y, that need support in the form of transportation, training opportunities, staff, and technical assistance, etc. The University should adequately support existing programs that have a track record of excellence in providing community service.
3. Restructure the Current Reward System.
The committee advises restructuring the reward system for faculty, staff, and students, and creating new incentives that will encourage service and community-based learning. In order of priority, we make these recommendations:
3A. Make the service mission at Carolina a serious and tangible counterpart to the teaching and research missions, including in hiring, promotion, tenure, and salary decisions.
3B. Encourage departmental commitments to service and community-based learning (see Section VII, 1B).
3C. Restructure and monitor departmental reward systems for faculty to recognize service to students. Insure that faculty are rewarded through annual salary increases for service to students and to student organizations; for student advising; for supervising student internships; for acting as faculty advisers to student service organizations; for serving on boards or committees of student, community, or University organizations that seek to promote student service; and for teaching service learning courses, as well as other similar activities (see Section VII, 1A).
3D. Create service learning course development awards; provide grants for service learning courses to cover student transportation and technical support costs; and provide teaching assistant support and stipends for service learning courses, with teaching assistants to be trained by the Public Service Center. (These grants would be similar to the Cultural Diversity Course Development grants available now.)
4. Create New Service Incentives.
4A. Create Chancellor's Public Service Awards. These awards, to be given annually, would be similar to the Tanner and other teaching awards, but the stipend to faculty would become a permanent increase to their base salary, a system adopted at the University of Georgia to honor service.
4B. Create Public Service Fellowship Awards. These awards, to be given annually to students, would provide them with financial support to pursue an innovative public service placement anywhere in the world, which they would create and arrange with support from the Public Service Center. (These awards would be similar to the Burch Fellowships awarded through the Honors Office.)
4C. Create a student organization public service grant fund for innovative group service proposals.
4D. Create Chancellor's Public Service Staff Awards to honor staff for extraordinary service to student service organizations or for extraordinary work in promoting student service at UNC-CH.
4E. Create a category of Distinction in Public Service for Bachelor's Degrees, to be administered through the Public Service Center and awarded to students who meet certain public service requirements, including service learning courses, a service project, and a set minimum of service hours to the community.
4F. Create permanent and term Public Service Professorships. The permanent professorships would be modeled after those at Stanford; and the term professorships, attached half-time to the Center for three to five years, would be similar to the newly created Honors Program Term Professorships.
CONCLUSIONS
At UNC-Chapel Hill, enormous energy is directed toward community service. Thus far, a small number of stalwarts have taken the initiative in organizing service learning, and student organizations such as the Campus Y, a.p.p.l.e.s, and the SHAC Medical Clinic have done great work under challenging circumstances. They illustrate the philosophy of Margaret Mead, who said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Students, faculty, and staff are passionate about service learning and community-based learning; we must provide the resources to support that enthusiasm. Now is the time for a sustained, pan-University commitment to make UNC-CH the best public university in the area of service and community-based learning by focusing the energy of its many talented constituents. This committee sees our recommendations as an exciting chance to improve how our students learn, how communities get help from us, and how we deliver on our mandate to serve the citizens of North Carolina. We believe that a public service center at UNC-CH, coupled with improved support, rewards and incentives for service, can accomplish those important objectives.
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