Serving to Learn, Learning to Serve: Education for Civic Responsibility

A Report Submitted by the Intellectual Climate Task Force Committee on Service and Community-Based Learning at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, September 1997

Executive Summary

Carolina 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 ultimate 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.

Chancellor Hooker challenged the Intellectual Climate Task Force Committee on Service and Community-Based Learning to help Carolina reach its potential by recommending ways that community service and service learning opportunities for students could be expanded, improved, and supported at UNC-CH. The committee sought to improve the intellectual climate of students by recommending ways to: (1) increase the number and quality of service learning and community-based learning opportunities in response to community-identified needs; and (2) encourage faculty to integrate community-based learning into their teaching, courses, and research.

This committee recommends the following major actions designed to extend and expand Carolina’s tradition of service:

1. create a public service center;
2. increase support for existing successful university public service programs and organizations; and
3. create tangible incentives for service and re-structure the faculty reward system.

We are convinced that implementing these recommendations will both improve the intellectual lives of students and help the University to fulfill its responsibility to educate future citizens and leaders. Service and community-based learning connect the University to the world beyond, in a way that profits both. Students who are engaged in such activities bring to their coursework first-hand experiences that invigorate intellectual inquiry and direct it into vital new channels. By the same token, service-based learning provides students with the intellectual tools necessary to solve pressing problems and cultivates in students the capacity for civic judgment essential to responsible citizenship. Carolina is blessed with service programs, such as SCALE, Campus Y, a.p.p.l.e.s, and the SHAC Medical Clinic, that have won national recognition for their accomplishments while existing at the margins of University resources. A Public Service Center will boost these excellent programs; it will reinvigorate Carolina's tradition of public service; and, by doing these, a center will catapult this campus to national pre-eminence in service and community-based learning. As the nation's first public university, Carolina can rightfully claim to have invented the idea of learning in service to society. Today, we have not only the potential but also the obligation to lead once more.

Building the Engaged Campus: Service Matters

A new generation of university leaders across the country 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 collaborations. 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. "The university itself is transformed by linking research to teaching to community service. ... The university is critical to developing civic consciousness in students." 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 undergraduate students who forged partnerships between campuses and communities. Since the 1980s, faculty, staff, and alumni on campuses across the United States have taken more active roles in integrating service into academic courses, and UNC-CH reflects this trend. Student organizations at universities also sponsor many non-service leaning community service activities. At UNC-CH, for example, the Campus Y, a department of Student Affairs and a recognized student organization, has provided a diverse range of service opportunities for students in successfully carrying out its mission—"the pursuit of social justice through the cultivation of pluralism." Now is the time for this University to make a sustained and transforming commitment to improve North Carolinians' lives by working in their communities.

The evidence demonstrates convincingly 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 because students apply real-life experiences to the classroom, and they apply 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; and
• develops career goals and creates career options.

The Public Service Roundtable survey also revealed that community-based learning carries benefits for faculty: it enables faculty to take down the classroom walls that divide the University faculty, staff, and students from community members; provides faculty with rich opportunities for new research; encourages interdisciplinary partnerships; and permits direct collaborations 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

Faculty, students, and staff generally are 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, however, there are barriers that prevent us from increasing service learning and community-based learning and prevent us from building effective partnerships that meet community-identified needs. The committee has identified the following three major barriers that must be eliminated:

1. Lack of coordination;
2. Lack of information; and
3. Lack of rewards and incentives, especially for faculty.

Barrier #1: Fragmentation and Lack of Coordination

Faculty, students, and staff already are engaged in various kinds of service, but there is not an identified, comprehensive, reliable mechanism for coordinating those existing service activities. Consequently, service activities at UNC-CH are fragmented. At least 45 UNC-CH faculty offer service learning courses, for example, but they are not listed in any one place. We know that 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 have no reliable means of knowing what others are doing outside their own schools, departments or disciplines, much less learning about service projects or service learning interests that might complement their own projects and invite interdisciplinary collaboration. Student organizations face similar barriers in communicating with other student organizations that may be planning service activities.

Although there are examples of pan-university coordinated service (such as the clean-up effort in the community after Hurricane Fran), student organizations seldom coordinate service activities with each other, often resulting in duplication of efforts. In order to facilitate a team approach to problem-solving, we need to reduce frustration and provide a centralized resource center where all members of the University community can learn about service activities, service learning courses, and public service initiatives.

Barrier #2: Lack of Information

Lack of information is especially frustrating for the community. Community members know that faculty and organizations on campus can help them, but generally they have no idea what services are provided because there is no convenient way to find out. 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?" Another community member complained, "We don't know what you do or how to find out." The result of uncoordinated activities is that in a given semester, some community agencies that need volunteers have none at all, while other agencies are inundated.

Barrier # 3: Incentives and Rewards: Getting Serious About Service

Campuses that are the most successful in integrating service with academic study are those where service is a "broadly understood and accepted mission"; the least successful campuses 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 is perceived by many to be a parenthetical mission and 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 service 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 because the professional risks simply are too great.

The faculty will continue to view service as an invisible mission until the University treats service as the equal to research with regard to hiring, tenure, promotion, and salary decisions. On the other hand, faculty members want to become involved in community-based learning activity, and they will "if such activity is rewarded in promotion and other personnel decisions." UNC-CH must recognize, reward, and encourage contributions to public service in the same way that it rewards and encourages good teaching and good research. Providing appropriate financial support and incentives are critical to faculty involvement: they demonstrate in concrete ways that the University is serious about service. Service awards, public service professorships, service grants, course development awards, course reductions, barrier-free interdisciplinary collaborations, course grants, and public service fellowships are all ways to encourage faculty members to expand service and community-based learning.

Similarly, students need 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 telephone and copying, computers and supplies, fellowships, and awards.

Recommendations for Action

Recommendation #1: Create a Center for Public Service

The committee strongly believes that a pan-university center for public service will reduce the problems associated with fragmentation and isolation and improve coordination and access to service learning and community-based service. A public service center's centralized responsibility and location, a full-time staff responsible for coordinating and developing new and tested opportunities, and its service as a gateway between all divisions and schools on campus and the community will enable UNC-CH to remove many of the barriers to effective, expanded collaborations with the community. Universities elsewhere have adopted a range of community-based service models, from public service centers (like Stanford, Brown), to specialized projects focusing on one aspect of community-based learning (such as CASE, the university-sponsored service learning program at Rutgers). 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. We conclude that a public service center is superior to other possible structures for service in its ability to increase, expand, and support service, service learning and community-based learning at UNC-CH.

A public service center is uniquely able to perform the diverse functions required to support the service work of this campus, and its creation will demonstrate a serious commitment by the University to transforming its service mission. A public service center will:

1. Provide a comprehensive database of community-identified service needs and campus service activities and interests of students, faculty, staff and alumni.
2. Serve as the entry point and gateway for community members seeking public service collaborations with students, faculty, staff and alumni, through a toll-free telephone number, an Internet website, a comprehensive database, and coordinated, screened referrals.
3. Coordinate and facilitate existing public service activities at UNC-CH, including service learning, internships, and other community-based learning activities.
4. Serve as an incubator for new service projects, innovative partnerships, and interdisciplinary collaborations.
5. Promote public service through seminars, workshops, conferences, and community events, and advocate for current and expanded community-based initiatives and volunteerism.
6. Provide a facility for the training of students, faculty, community members, and staff.
7. Develop new public service financial programs and administer service fellowships, awards, and grants.
8. Continually assess the need for and provide support services, such as transportation, access to technical support, and training, to faculty, students, and staff in existing service programs.
9. Develop public service peer and career counseling, in coordination with existing career counseling services, for students interested in careers in public service.
10. Provide a home, with administrative and technical support, for campus organizations whose primary mission is community service, such as the a.p.p.l.e.s program.
11. Develop inter-university collaborations with Duke, NCCU, other area universities, and other universities in the UNC system to address community-identified problems, locallly and statewide.
12. Produce service-related publications and encourage research and writing in the area of service.
13. Provide support to faculty, giving validity and credibility to service initiatives, and thus increasing faculty community-based learning endeavors.

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.

• UNC-CH Public Service Center Administrative Structure

The director of the center should be appointed by September 1, 1997, and he or she should report directly to the Provost. 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. One of the Center's purposes is to enhance communication between the different divisions and schools and to encourage collaboration where appropriate. The Center staff would include a half-time coordinator for Health Affairs, who would work with the Director of Interdisciplinary and Community Based Learning in Health Affairs. The staff would also include a coordinator of service learning for Academic Affairs and a coordinator of community-based learning for Student Affairs. The Provost should appoint a Planning Board, composed of alumni, community members, students, staff, and faculty by May 1, 1997. An Advisory Board composed of faculty, students, staff, and community members should also be created, and appointed as soon as practicable.

Affiliations and reporting relationships within any public service center will be complex and should be determined initially by the Provost upon the advice of the Planning Committee. One option is for some programs to affiliate with the center while maintaining their present reporting relationships -- rather than report to the center's director. For example, the Campus Y would continue to report to the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, and the director of Interdisciplinary and Community-Based Programs in Health Affairs would continue reporting to the Office of the Vice Provost for Health Affairs. It is our vision that the Campus Y and the public service center would share the same building. The Campus Y and other affiliated service organizations would retain their respective missions, autonomy, and resources.

• Divisions and Students Served

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 in 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. Some faculty are eager for these collaborations and are frustrated because they have no link to undergraduates. A public service center will make all of these connections possible. 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—this means social work graduate students working with law students, who are working with psychology and political science undergraduates, who are working with medical students. Long-term, interdisciplinary partnerships are the most effective, as well as inclusive, way to promote the well-being of communities. The community reasonably expects that we can devise creative pan-university solutions to help address their pressing social problems.

Recommendation #2: Increase Support for Successful, Existing Service and Community-Based Learning Programs

As stated in the UNC-CH SACS Re-Accreditation Report in 1995, the University must increase support for those existing programs and organizations which have been successful in providing 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, which need support in the form of transportation, training opportunities, staff, and technical assistance, etc. The University should adequately support existing programs that have a demonstrated track record of excellence in providing community service.

Recommendation #3: Re-Structure the Reward System and Create New Service Incentives

The committee recommends the restructuring of the reward system for faculty, staff, and students, and the creation of tangible new incentives that will encourage service and community-based learning. In order of priority, these recommendations are:

1. Make the service mission at Carolina equal to the research mission in all respects, including hiring, promotion, tenure, and salary decisions.
2. Restructure and monitor departmental reward systems 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. In particular, we recommend that a percentage of the funds provided to departments be set aside for this purpose and that the proper and equitable disbursement of those funds be strictly monitored by the Provost. We also recommend that a mechanism be implemented to insure that these activities, in fact, are considered and given important weight in promotion, salary, and hiring decisions.
3. Create service learning course development awards: six awards of $4,000 each to be given annually; provide grants of up to $500 each year for service learning courses to cover student transportation costs and technical support costs; and provide TA support and stipends for service learning courses, with TAs to be trained by the Public Service Center. (These grants are similar to the Cultural Diversity Course Development grants available now.)
4. Create the Chancellor's Public Service Awards: three awards to faculty at $5,000 each and six awards to students at $1,500 each, all awards to be given annually. (These awards are similar to the Tanner and other teaching awards.) The $5,000 award to faculty would become a permanent increase to their base salary, a system adopted at the University of Georgia to honor service.
5. Create Public Service Fellowship Awards: six awards of up to $6,000 each, to be awarded annually to students, to provide them with the financial support to pursue an innovative public service interest placement, anywhere in the world, which they create and arrange with support from the Public Service Center. (These awards are similar to the Burch Fellowships awarded through the Honors Office.)
6. Create a student organization public service grant fund: $15,000 annually to be disbursed in grants of up to $2,000 each to student service organizations, for the funding of innovative group service proposals.
7. Create Chancellor's Public Service Staff Awards: three annual awards of $5,000 each to honor staff for extraordinary service to student service organizations or for extraordinary work in promoting student service at UNC-CH. The $5,000 award to staff would become a permanent increase to their base salary.
8. Create a Bachelor's Degree with Distinction in Public Service: awarded to students who meet certain public service requirements, including service learning courses, a project, and a set minimum of service hours to the community, and administered through the Public Service Center.
9. Create permanent Public Service Professorships and term Public Service Professorships: two permanent professorships attached to the Center (similar to the public service professorship at Stanford); and four term professorships, attached half-time to the Center for 3-5 years and carrying a $7,500 annual salary supplement each. (These term professorships are similar to the newly created Honors Program Term Professorships.)

Implementation and Funding

Primary funding for the structure and the center should come from private donors and foundations, with an endowment sought to sustain its activities. The Planning Board should be appointed by May 1, 1997. The public service center should be approved by July 1, 1997, and the Director hired by September 1, 1997, with the coordinators in place by November 1, 1997. The stipends, fellowships, and awards, outlined above, would take effect during the 1997-98 academic year, and the professorships should be endowed by September 1, 1999. Fundraising for the center should begin by June 1, 1997.

Conclusion

At UNC-Chapel Hill, there is enormous energy 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, in critical ways, 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.

¹Service learning is defined as students learning through direct service that takes place in the external community, meets needs identified by the community, and is integrated into the students' academic coursework. Other community-based learning includes a range of volunteer service to the community that is not part of academic coursework, from one-time projects (such as group Habitat for Humanity workdays) to substantial public service over one or two semesters or longer (such as serving as a guardian in juvenile court for abused or neglected children). As used in this report, public service and community service mean service by faculty, students, staff, and alumni to the external community. While faculty, staff, and students rightfully regard much of what they do for the University community as service (such as serving on this committee), this report does not include such University service.

²See American Association of Higher Education Bulletin, The Engaged Campus, vol. 47, no. 5, Jan. 1995.

³See Campus Compact, The Project for Public and Community Service, Service Matters: A Sourcebook for Community Service in Higher Education (1996).

⁴N. Peirce and C. Johnson, The Peirce Report, The News & Observer, Sept. 26, 1993, at 13. See Appendix.

⁵Interview with Ira Harkavy, Director, University of Pennsylvania Center for Community Partnerships, Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, March 26, 1995.

⁶The a.p.p.l.e.s program at UNC-CH, founded by students in 1990, is an example: this program remains entirely student-funded and organized, and undergraduates tax themselves through student fees to fund the program and its full-time service learning coordinator.

⁷Public Service Roundtable, 1996 Survey of Service Learning in Academic Affairs. See Appendix.

⁸The Campus Y is composed of 20 like-minded committees, and it reports that 800 students yearly provide more than 15,000 hours of service. In addition to the Campus Y, there are about 200 other student groups, including sororities and fraternities, that regularly or intermittently provide service to the outside community.

⁹The Public Service Roundtable survey was conducted by its Committee on Service and Community-Based Learning, and its members included community members, students, faculty, and staff (see list in Appendix). It looked at courses taught in Academic Affairs during two academic years, 1993-94 and 1994-95. During that period, 68 different SL courses, with 180 sections offered, were taught by 45 Academic Affairs faculty, with class size averaging 20 students. A.p.p.l.e.s has assisted 28 faculty members with service-learning courses since 1991. Most SL placements were in non-profit agencies in the Triangle, with an estimated 3,000 students working an average of 50 hours per week per semester, totaling about 150,000 hours of service to the community, and valued, at a minimum, at $750,000.

¹⁰Campus Compact, Project on Integrating Service with Academic Study: Fourteen Findings, 1994).

¹¹M. Levine, "Seven Steps to Getting Faculty Interested in Service Learning," Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, vol. 1, 110-114, at 113, 1994.

¹²In the 1995 service learning survey conducted by the Public Service Roundtable, faculty reported that increasing SL participation would require a wide range of incentives to appeal to different needs, including course development support, stipends, course reduction, institutional technical and administrative support, and, very importantly, a centralized information-service system to identify community needs and service opportunities that complement their courses. The Roundtable recommended the development of those incentives. (PSR SL Survey)(Appendix).

¹³The Public Service Roundtable also recommended the creation of a pan-university Center for Public Service based on the results of its committee’s 1995 survey.

¹⁴These examples demonstrate that university barriers enforcing separation between disciplines, curricula, departments, and schools, and limiting easy interdisciplinary collaborations, can be overcome. Nationally, interest in organizing service at universities is increasing; a 1996 study by the Public Service Roundtable (PSR) at UNC-CH found that 15 of 21 peer universities sampled had recently created committees to examine their outreach efforts, and other campuses around the country have created public service centers, councils, or institutes to coordinate public service by students, faculty, and staff. (D. Calleson, et al., PSR Structures for Service Study; Center and Office Models for Public Service, 1996) (See Appendix)

¹⁵The Haas Center was created by Stanford's president in 1984, staffed in 1985, endowed with five million dollars in 1989, and housed in a new building in 1993. The Haas Center has a national reputation for excellence, a full-time staff of 20, and is home to 45 student-run community service groups, university-sponsored service organizations, and service and community partnership organizations. It provides peer advising; maintains a public and community service opportunities database of 700 community organizations; coordinates over 40 service learning courses across the curriculum; is the base for Stanford in Washington, an academic internship program in Washington, D.C.; administers public service fellowships; houses public service professorships; holds conferences; sponsors a public service dormitory; and produces many publications in service-related fields.

¹⁶The Swearer Center at Brown operates 30 community-based projects, including a statewide literacy program (directed toward immigrants, teen parents, senior citizens, the homeless, and the deaf) and an interdisciplinary community development project at a battered women's shelter, where students work together in all areas, including crisis intervention, court advocacy, and fundraising. The Haas Center at Stanford and the Swearer Center at Brown illustrate the enormous potential of such public service centers.

¹⁷Examples of possible new programs include international and national semester-long academic service programs, such as a UNC-in-Washington semester; a residential service semester in another country; and fall/spring break service programs for students, faculty, alumni and staff.

¹⁸"Students must be prepared properly to enter the service area so that they will not be blind-sided." (Levine, at 114) As one community leader told the committee, "Sometimes no volunteers are better than [untrained, unprepared] volunteers."

¹⁹This BA/BS with Distinction in Public Service is similar to the degree now awarded at some other universities, including the University of Utah.

²⁰In the "absence of serious, sustained commitment, our situation is one in which transient student leadership, shaky administrative support, fragmentation and isolation divert the energy of many into simply keeping afloat whatever has been launched, without cracking bottles of champagne on the prows of new ventures." Catherine Milton, The State of Public Service at Stanford, Report to Stanford President Donald Kennedy, June 13, 1984.