Service-learning combines learning goals with community service to enhance both student growth and the common good (vanderbilt.edu). As Dr. Dean states in Journey to South Africa, the WCU Honors College service-learning program starts in the spring semester, when students enroll in an honors course focusing on South Africa’s unfolding story of nation building in the post-apartheid era.

After learning about the history, culture, politics, and more about South Africa and the people they will meet personally, the students eventually (and most excitingly) get to experience South Africa in a two-week immersion journey. Service-learning is the foundation for each international program which goes hand-in-hand with the Honors College mission statement: “To be honorable is to serve.”

While the students participate in traditional service like making and delivering soup, the main service-learning experience requires research-based service through ethnographic interviews. These interviews are designed to research and develop solutions to community issues. Students are paired with interview teams, which conduct ninety-minute interviews with caregivers. They are tasked with analyzing the interview transcripts and searching for repeating themes in terms of the caregivers’ needs, which are provided to the partner program.

It is critical for students to realize that they are guests in a foreign country. Dr. Dean says it perfectly. “Temptation exists for students to “fix” and critique perceived problems. Such a passion to “help” intensifies during the days of interviews when the “hypothetical accounts” of hunger, abuse, disease, and death become a face seen, a voice heard, a touch felt, a full person realized.” The ultimate goal for the South Africa service-learning experience is to not “solve” a problem but to show up and learn.