Office of experiential learning provides students with community service activities

What if you were told that you must participate in some form of community service before you graduated? Teresa Taylor, who has been a Service Learning Coordinator at Georgia College & State University for nearly three years, explains the duties of the Office of Experiential Learning.

“It’s an umbrella for service learning, the GEM program, student research, and it’s under the direction of Dr. Robin O. Harris,” she said. “Students who participate in the program must be enrolled in a class that
requires a service learning component.”

“The inclusion of Service Learning is strictly up to the individual faculty member,” said Dr. Robin Harris, director of the Office of Experiential Learning and assistant professor in the Department of Government & Sociology.

To be eligible for service learning, students must have their instructor enroll them in a service project. Once enrolled, students must write a reflection on their experience, either through writing a journal, holding a class discussion, or writing a research paper.

“The faculty will get in touch with me, and I’ll work with that faculty member to make sure that I have a program or project that deals with their major and is tied to that class. It will involve a minimum of about 20 hours inside the community,” said Taylor.

The projects must also be able to meet the needs of that community, as well as be able to connect academic theory to practical application. Service learning projects are open to students in all majors and classes.

Not all majors require students to participate in service learning. The School of Business is the only school that require all majors to complete a service project.

Among the organizations and events the Office of Experiential Learning has worked with in the past are the J. Whitney Bunting School of Business, Relay For Life, the Milledgeville-Baldwin County Chamber of Commerce and Meals on Wheels.

“We are very fortunate at GC&SU to have the GIVE Center and Kendall Stiles. Kendall’s work has set a standard for college campuses across the state. Her ability to identify projects and motivate student interest and involvement makes our job so much easier!” said Harris.

“We have had so many wonderful positive feedback from community leaders, from students, from faculty, from staff,” said Taylor. “(President Rosemary De Paolo) has remarked that she’s pleased with the service learning program.”

Taylor believes that while the service learning program has accomplished a lot, there is room for improvement in the coming years.

“I’m so excited about the possibilities of making sure that we have a strategic plan in the next five years that would say all students will participate in a service learning project before they graduate,” said Taylor. “Students who have a positive experience with their service learning project will embrace that and let other students know that this is worthwhile, and as a person they’ll have grown significantly than they were before they were in the project.”

Harris believes the program is successful because of Teresa Taylor. “Our Service Learning Coordinator Teresa Taylor has achieved tremendous success here at GC&SU, taking us from zero to nearly 20,000 hours of service to the community through class-room related projects in less than three years,” said Harris. “She is responsible for GC&SU having seven programs named ‘model programs’ by Campus Compact.”

Harris strongly stresses the importance of service learning in a students career. “We are helping build in our students a concern for the world in which they live and a mindset that addresses how education can be used to benefit society,” she said.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 18 2002. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry