Service-Learning

Our Service-Learning program encourages students to become active members in local, national, and global communities through service experiences related to classroom curriculum. 

• Volunteering at non-profit and community organizations.

• Assisting with the varied needs of community members.

• Faculty will co-design a 5 hour service-learning project in a minimum of 1 course per academic year 

• Working with community partner organizations to create and participate in projects aimed for community improvement.

• Involves student voice and leadership 

• Examining learning-service with a social justice lens

There are many ways to support or assist a community. There are four types of service-learning activities: Direct, Indirect, Advocacy, and Research-Based. Each has its own benefits and limitations, and each type uses a different set of skills. FALA Faculty implement: Indirect, Advocacy, and Research-Based service-learning, yet the model can be adapted to work with direct service-learning experiences. Creative Action is a supplemental method that can be used with any of the above service-learning approaches.

Direct Service-Learning

Students participate in face-to-face service-learning activities that directly effect and involve the service recipients. This type of service-learning is generally seen as the most rewarding for students because they receive immediate positive feedback during the process of helping others. Yet for global service-learning projects, direct service-learning often is only possible when traveling to an international location (with the exception of creating a local project that work with members of your own community who are from other cultures and countries).

Benefits: Students learn responsibility, dependability, problem-solving, interpersonal skills and how to make a difference in another’s life by focusing on getting along with and serving others.

Examples of Direct Service:

• Serving nutritious meals to the elderly;

• Coaching sports for younger students

• Reading to small children;

• Tutoring other students and adults;

• Creating lessons and presenting them to younger students; or • Creating life reviews for Hospice patients.

Indirect Service-Learning

Students work with representatives from the community in order to develop and

implement their project, but not necessarily with an individual with whom the project will benefit. Indirect

service-learning projects are often conducted by a group and therefore aid in student development of teamwork and organizational skills.

Benefits: Students learn teamwork, cooperation, playing different roles, organization, problem-solving, and project-specific skills.

Examples of Indirect Service:

• Develop a community-wide food drive to supply the local food bank; • Organize a team for a Special Olympics event in the community;

Examples of Indirect Service: 

• Develop a community-wide food drive to supply the local food bank; 

• Organize a team for a Special Olympics event in the community; 

• Plan, plant, maintain and harvest produce from a school or community garden; 

• Collecting food or toys for disadvantaged families; 

• Participating in landscaping a community park or other environmental projects; 

• Compiling a neighborhood history; or 

• Winterizing homes for community members.

Advocacy Service-Learning 

Students participate in service-learning experiences that are designed to create awareness and promote action on a particular issue impacting an individual or community. Activities may include making presentations or distributing literature about the issues throughout a community. In advocacy projects students must identify who they will be trying to communicate their message. 

Benefits: Students learn perseverance, persuasive speaking or writing, engaged citizenship, how to work with adults, how to clearly and concisely articulate concerns, to suggest feasible solutions, and understanding of rules, systems, and processes. 

Examples of Advocacy: 

• Letter writing campaign; 

• Meet with members of Congress; 

• Use the media: op-ed pieces, letters to the editor, press release or public service announcements; 

• Organize a teach-in: show a movie with a panel discussion following, invite a speaker, host a work shop, open mike, speak-outs, debate or panel discussion; 

• Organize a demonstration:  CLIMATE STRIKE, vigil, sit-in, march or picket line; and 

• Voter registration. 

Research-Based Service-Learning 

Students participate in service-learning experiences that require them to gather, analyze and report 

information on areas of interest and of community need.

Benefits: Students learn teamwork, cooperation, playing different roles, organization, prioritization, 

problem-solving, and project-specific skills. They learn how to find information or answers, make 

discriminating judgments, work systematically, and assess, evaluate, and test hypotheses. 

Examples of Research-Based Service: 

• Conducting census of a neighborhood’s assets, needs, and potential solutions; 

• Gathering information and creating promotional materials such as brochures or videos 

for non-profit; 

• Compile and create a website on available community services and translate it into languages of residents; 

• Conducting surveys, studies, evaluations, experiments, interviews, etc.

FALA Specific: 

• Office Aid or Teaching Assistant

• Service to the school, ie; murals, doors, campus art, donations to FALA GALA 

• CampFALA Summer camp counselor 

• Students can write proposals for Campus wide projects

• Senior Projects based in Service