Provost Academy Books

At this time of a renewed call for colleges and universities to create campus cultures that support and develop students' understanding and commitment to civic participation, what is known about the design of service learning courses and their effectiveness to achieve this goal? This volume presents research on--and deepens understanding of--teaching strategies that foster the knowledge, skills and dispositions of college graduates to be actively engaged in their communities as citizens and civic-minded professionals.

Community-based research (CBR) is the most commonly used method for serving community needs and effecting change through authentic, ethical, and meaningful social research. In this brief introduction to CBR, the real-world approach of noted experts Vera Caine and Judy Mill helps novice researchers understand the promise and perils of engaging in this research tradition.

For directors of campus centers that have received the Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement, this book offers research and models to further advance their work. For directors starting out, or preparing for application for the Carnegie Classification, it provides guidance on setting up and structuring centers as well as practical insights into the process of application and the criteria they will need to meet. Building on the findings of the research undertaken by the author and John Saltmarsh on the infrastructure of campus centers for engagement that have received the Carnegie Classification for Community, this book responds to the expressed needs of the participating center directors for models and practices they could share and use with faculty, and mid-level and upper-level administrators to more fully embed engagement into institutional culture and practice.

Are there better ways to address community challenges than expending funds on international service-learning? In attempting to wed learning and service, are we are exploiting the "other" for new, or recycled, aims? As these questions attest, of all types of service-learning, international service-learning (ISL) most starkly illuminates the tensions between the liberatory and oppressive potentials of practice. This book explores the ramifications of realizing a new age of service-learning that pushes beyond single episodic course-based projects to rebalance student learning and community outcome priorities, and provides insight into what it looks like in its execution.

This book constitutes a guide for student and staff leaders in alternative break (and other community engagement, both domestic and international) programs, offering practical advice, outlining effective program components and practices, and presenting the underlying community engagement and global learning theory. Readers will gain practical skills for implementing each of the eight components of a quality alternative break program developed by Break Away, the national alternative break organization.

The purpose of this work is to improve service learning research and practice through strengthening its theoretical base. Contributing authors include both well-known and emerging service learning and community engagement scholars, as well as scholars from other fields. The authors bring theoretical perspectives from a wide variety of disciplines to bear as they critically review past research, describe assessment methods and instruments, develop future research agendas, and consider implications of theory-based research for enhanced practice.

A college student wants to lead a campaign to ban a young adult novel from his child's elementary school as his service-learning project in a children's literature course. Believing the book is offensive to religious sensibilities, he sees his campaign as a service to children and the community. Viewing such a ban as limiting freedom of speech and access to information, the student's professor questions whether leading a ban qualifies as a service project. If the goal of service is to promote more vital democratic communities, what should the student do? What should the professor do? How do they untangle competing democratic values? How do they make a decision about action?
This book addresses the teaching dilemmas, such as the above, that instructors and students encounter in service-learning courses. Recognizing that teaching, in general, and service-learning, in particular, are inherently political, this book faces up to the resulting predicaments that inevitably arise in the classroom. By framing them as a vital and productive part of the process of teaching and learning for political engagement, this book offers the reader new ways to think about and address seemingly intractable ideological issues.