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volunteer! learn by doing! get involved! sign up now! meet people! collaborate! help out!
by Lauren Brown
Carrying pillows and sleeping bags from their
dorm rooms, a few Maryland students arrive at
Calvary Women's Shelter in Washington, D.C.,
at 10 p.m. Their task for a few nights of the
semester seems simple enough: Answer the
phone or door. Try to sleep. Get up at 6 and put
out breakfast and a pot of coffee. Make sure the
25 women who live there are out the door by 8.
The students chat with the residents, who are leaving behind abusive
relationships, drug addictions or unemployment and heading to
work or school. Back on campus, the students attend seminars on
homelessness, meet guest speakers and consider such questions as:
What perceptions about homelessness did they bring to the shelter?
How had they changed?
Stephanie Rivero, a senior majoring in family science, called the
work "inspiring."
The women slowly "opened up to us and we saw just how difficult
their lives were," she says, recalling how the shelter's coordinator
got her and her peers to think about how the women there had
lost everything. "And after we got that, it was even more fulfilling
when they did talk to us."
This isn't just volunteerism. It's a national trend called civic
engagement. The University of Maryland is a leader among
colleges encouraging students to become citizens who act to
improve their communities.
People born between 1982 and 2000 are America's first "civic
generation" since the 1930s and 1940s, according to Morley
Winograd and Michael D. Hais Ph.D '73, authors of the 2008
bestseller "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future
of American Politics." Interest in public service has gained further
traction with the election of President Barack Obama, who has
championed community service, and Congress's passage last spring
of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, a broad outline to
expand service opportunities and reward people who take part.
Campus Compact, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting community
service, civic engagement and service-learning in higher
education, has grown from 500 participating schools in 2006 to
more than 1,100 now, representing 6 million students.
"The growth preceded Obama," says Elizabeth Hollander, former
executive director of Campus Compact and now senior fellow at
the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service,
Tufts University. "But what he did was reinforce it in a huge way."
She praised Maryland's "innovative" efforts to get students
thinking about their role in society, and in particular its efforts to
measure the growth in student involvement—whether in oneday
stream cleanups, yearlong mentoring and literacy programs at
elementary schools or alternative breaks spent rebuilding homes
on the Gulf Coast. U.S. News & World Report also consistently
ranks the university's service-learning opportunities on its list of
"Programs to Look For."
Anecdotal evidence of the boom at Maryland abounds. Preregistration
for Terp Service Weekend jumped from 300 in 2008
to 560 this past April. The Coalition for Civic Engagement and
Leadership reached thousands of students in the last academic year
through its 2-year-old Web site,
www.TerpImpact.umd.edu.
Terps for Change, a volunteer
placement program formed
last fall through the university's
Leadership and Community Service-Learning unit, already has a
waiting list of students seeking long-term opportunities.
All kinds of organizations on campus are putting the "learning"
in "service-learning." Leadership and Community Service-Learning
has students—like those who volunteered at the women's shelter—
come together for reflective discussions on their work, where they
wrestle with their preconceptions and evaluate the success of social
systems. Students in CIVICUS, a two-year living and learning
program in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, take
special classes about societal challenges and write in their journals
about their experiences in nonprofits, governmental agencies and
schools. In College Park Scholars, another living and learning
community, all 900 freshmen participate in a service day around
the Washington area every August.
"Overall, we're seeing more involvement both by individual
students doing service-related projects, as well as finding faculty
who are very interested in creating those kinds of experiences for
students," says Martha Baer Wilmes, associate director for student
affairs in College Park Scholars.
After all, faculty members want their students to learn, and students
generally prefer to learn by doing rather than through lectures.
Students also know they can learn leadership skills as part of their
community service experience, and build their résumés.
A critical component of service-learning is stressing its reciprocal
nature: While volunteering is a one-way act, participants in
service-learning give and receive.
"The old—the bad—way to go in thinking was, ‘We know what
you need. We're here to solve your problems,'" says Barbara Jacoby,
senior scholar at the Adele H. Stamp Student Union-Center for
Campus Life. "Now we consider the community in terms of its
assets as well as its needs."
She gets much of the credit for the university's commitment to
focusing on that difference. This year, Jacoby '71, M.A. '72, Ph.D
'78 published her fourth book on service-learning and civic
engagement, "Civic Engagement in
Higher Education: Concepts
and Practices." She and
colleague Susan R. Jones Ph.D. '95 in
the College of Education are
seeking a grant to study how
students develop a civic identity.
"We have these resources here that really inform what we do,"
says Craig Slack, the Stamp's assistant director for leadership and
community service-learning. He helped establish the university's
year-old minor in leadership studies, which connects theory to
students' identity, major and interests in the community.
Jacoby was a founder of the university's Coalition for Civic
Engagement and Leadership, which shows faculty how to
incorporate civic engagement into their classes and integrated
the concept into the education of a large majority of Maryland
students, through required English 101 classes. The Terp Impact
Web site has won accolades nationwide for pulling together all
of the civic engagement and leadership opportunities for students
on and off campus, encouraging collaboration and reducing
duplication of efforts.
"Students were telling us that they knew so much was going
on in the way of civic engagement, but they couldn't fi nd it,"
Jacoby says.
She adds that there's no way to measure the coalition's success
because that's ultimately reflected in the community and around
the world, as more civic-minded graduates go on to nurture
commitments to their neighborhoods, professions, families and
faith communities.
But she's encouraged by examples like Stephanie Rivero, who
planned to return to the women's shelter this fall and hopes to
become a family and marriage counselor, and Matthew "M.J."
Kurs-Lasky, a senior majoring in marketing. He came to Maryland
as a College Park Scholar, created a service day for Jewish students,
interned for nonprofits for the past two summers and is seeking a
career in the nonprofit sector.
Civic engagement, Kurs-Lasky says, "is something that might
not have been formulated in my head coming to Maryland,
but Maryland solidified it for me. I can put in a great deal of
work, and at the end of the day, there's noticeable change in
the community."
TERP
The University of Maryland is in the forefront of colleges nationwide in supporting efforts to help students become citizens who are engaged in their communities. It's virtually impossible to hit every program, class, initiative, Greek organization, living and learning community and group that focuses on civic engagement, but here's a sample:
Want to learn more?
Join the University of Maryland Alumni Association now to automatically receive Terp magazine and to stay connected to the University of Maryland community.
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