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College of Charleston 2009 Annual Report2009 ANNUAL REPORT OF PROGRAM ACTIVITIES Please add narrative text that responds to the questions in the four categories below.
Implementation of Student DevelopmentWhat was the structure and content for the implementation of the developmental model this year? In particular, please share (no more than one page text needed):
I. Structure for training, courses, & meetings
Students were split into two groups based on year in school so that the trainings could be geared to the appropriate level of the Bonner student development model. Meetings were held each week and included an all Bonner meeting every Monday night which was followed by a rotating schedule of B Fresh and Lead Fresh meetings. Thus all Bonner students met once a week and each of our two classes met twice a month either before or after the all Bonner meeting. In the all Bonner meetings the agenda covered logistics, upcoming events, issue specific discussions, plans for Service Saturdays, and team building. The meetings for the freshman and sophomores included trainings on tutoring, campus and community awareness and asset mapping, and self assessments. Meetings for junior and senior level Bonner students included planning sessions for Engage and Empower, discussing post college options, and issue based reflections. For this coming year we will be hosting a VISTA for the Bonner program who will help us make sure that we have carefully planned meetings and reflections throughout the year.
II. Cornerstone Activities
Orientation
Being the first year of the program all of the students were new this year. Bonner Leaders spent two days receiving an orientation to the campus, the community, and each other. The first day of orientation was focused on creating many opportunities for the students to get to know each other. Students took a tour of the campus, participated in a service project, engaged in several team building exercises and ended the day with a reflection activity. The second day of orientation was more in-depth as they spent time learning about the history of the Bonner Foundation, details of the Bonner Leader program in general and details about our program at the College of Charleston.
First Year Trip
The first year trip was developed as a multi service trip in order to expose the students to as much as possible. The group spent two days with each project and worked on environmental, cultural and immigration issues. The group participated in cultural activities and reflection throughout the week. The logistics were planned by the Senior Intern and another Bonner who had participated in Alternative Break, with the supervision of the Director, but the whole group had input on the location and possible projects. Fundraising for the trip was a group effort throughout the first semester.
Creating a Unique Event: Engage and Empower
In order to spread awareness on campus and in the community, Bonner students held this week long advocacy series addressing a new issue each night. Each of the juniors and seniors took the lead on a specific event and developed the agenda and planned all of the logistics for their night of programming. All of our Bonner Leaders worked on marketing for the events and both the campus and community were encouraged to attend.
III. Roles of Student Leaders in integration of the Serve 2.0 initiative
Facebook- This tool was actively used by the Bonner group this year in order to send reminders about meetings and extra events that they were supposed to attend. Facebook events or groups were also made for any special events hosted by Bonner and then used as a marketing tool to get participation in the events.
Blog -This tool was used for reflection and even communication with students who were abroad. Students were told to post a blog twice a month reflecting on their specific service site or something that they have learned during that week. It also proved to be a great tool to keep in contact with one of our students who traveled abroad because one post could be seen by everyone.
Wiki- This tool was mainly used while implementing the Bonner program at CofC as a way to keep all of the information easily accessible on one site. The Senior Intern maintains this site and now it is used as a tool to market the College of Charleston program to future students.
Implementation of Community PartnershipsPlease share a summary of your work with community partners, highlighting your work regarding (no more than one page text needed):
I. Arrangement and Management of Community Partnerships and Placements. As this was our first year, it was recommended that we “go” and then get ready and set after we had already run the program for a year. In fact, this is actually very close to what we did. We allowed students to pick non profits that they wanted to work with in the community and then we began discussions with the staff. The program ran successfully through the year and now this summer we have taken the opportunity to conduct site visits and invite new non profits to participate in this program. All of our potential partners have been asked to submit job descriptions of what students would do at their particular site for each of the four student development stages. In an effort to continue to build our partnerships with our community partners the Bonner Senior Intern will conduct a once a month phone call check-in with our partners and refer any “issues” to the Bonner VISTA and Director . We will also conduct once a semester community partner site visits.
II. How Partners were engaged as co-educators. Using our partners as co-educators is a process that we are hoping to develop further though the coming year. Out first step in this process is having them create job descriptions that are based on what they have read and learned from us for the student development stages. We are hoping that this process will get our partners thinking about the big picture of the Bonner program and encourage them to play a more active role as co-educators.
III. Partnerships Managed Through Site-Based or Issue-Oriented Teams. In the next two years we will continue to have many community partners and will use the ongoing feedback that we receive from our students and partners to narrow down which organizations will be the best long term partners. A big part of this process will look at which of our partners have become the best co-educators. We are working towards creating site-based teams but are also interested in having one issue track where a student might switch partners every year but be working on the same issue. This would be a way for us to serve more non profits but still make a larger impact on one specific issue.
IV. Capacity Building Initiatives for Community Partners. As this was the first year of our program, all of our students were involved for the most part in direct service activities. By the end of the year two students were conducting surveys for their program and two others were helping to start a new initiative within the program they worked for. We hope that by year three of our program we will be able to have more students focusing on capacity building initiatives.
Campus-Wide Culture and InfrastructurePlease describe key activities and structures related to the development of campus-wide infrastructure and the role of the Bonner Program in enhancing (or being enhanced by) campus-wide culture and participation in service. In particular, share (no more than one page text needed):
I. Key Activities for Faculty Engagement and Academic Connections. While the College of Charleston has had a strong co-curricular commitment to service for many years the same can not be said for academia’s participation in and utilization of service in the classroom. To this end the Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) will be hosting a Faculty Fellow for Civic Engagement to develop and implement a promotional campaign to ensure awareness/understanding of all components of civic engagement, to motivate and educate faculty in service learning pedagogy, and highlight the benefits of service-learning and community based research for the institution and community.
II. Key Relationships and Activities Invovling Other Departments. The CCE has worked very hard over the past year to establish and build relationships across our campus. We have worked most closely with Student Affairs and Academic Affairs to build our year 1 budget as we progressed through the year. We have utilized departments and specific programming to provide the best resources possible to our leaders. This included taking self-defense classes, using the tutoring lab to teach refresher courses on long division to improve our mentors’ skills, and teaming up with student clubs and organizations to co-sponsor social justice awareness events. We also worked and continue to work with the Office of Financial Aid to make sure that our leaders are offered the best financial aid package possible and given the highest allowable work-study allocation. In addition to a general meeting with all Bonners, leaders were given the chance to schedule a one-on-one conference with a director from Financial Aid. While previous and current recruitment will be largely up to the CCE, we are already working with Admissions so that by year 4 of our program, when we will only be accepting 10 Freshman each year, much of the recruitment process will be handled by their office with a selection committee making the final decisions. Discussions have also begun with the LeadershipCenter on campus to be able to offer our leaders some of their programming and opportunities for free in exchange for the Leaders leading a session or two.
III. Unique Initiatives that have Enhanced Institutionalization of Service and Civic Engagement on This past year Bonner Leaders created a week-long awareness and advocacy building event that was centered on issues here in Charleston and open to the entire campus and greater Charleston community. While the Center for Civic Engagement offers many one time service events, there are only a few that would be currently seen as a true institutional commitment to service. This event, created by the students themselves, took a true step towards having that sort of institutionalization after only one year. Students took on real issues including getting up close and personal with some of the students at one of the 5 local elementary schools that would close at the end of the year due to massive school district budget cuts. The work that was done with the students was to give them a chance to express how they felt about their school closing and create a safe space where they could exhibit those feelings and know that others would listen to them. This night which received a great deal of publicity kicked off the week and gave the Bonner Program almost immediate validity. After that evening we had a few faculty call the CCE to ask what other issues we would be covering so they could instruct their students to attend. This sort of interest from faculty is almost unheard of on our campus.
Creating a Bonner Leader program on our campus has already greatly enhanced the institutionalization of service on our campus. The office has made important connections with various Departments that did not previously exist. As such, understanding of what the Center for Civic Engagement actually does has dramatically increased. As faculty and staff learn more about our office and all the programs we manage we receive more and more advocates for our program which has resulted in additional funding opportunities for the office and even the opportunity to hire an Assistant Director for the Center.
Serve 2.0Please highlight your key activities related to the integration of web-based tools as they are connected to the design, management, and outreach for service. In particular, share (no more than one page text needed):
The College of Charleston's Center for Civic Engagement Blog The Bonner Leaders' initial foray into web 2.0 communication tools has seen many successes, but has also revealed how far the program has to mature to truly make web based technologies effective in marketing our events and activities. The Center for Civic Engagement has experienced tremendous success in recruiting and sustaining student interest in service through the use of listservs, electronic newsletters, and web based calendars. These tools, which have allowed the CCE to maintain continuous communications to all students who are service and volunteer oriented, have been used to both gauge initial campus interest in the Bonner Leader program, and to move into web 2.0 marketing.
The Center for Civic Engagement has created a blog based website to serve as an online bridge between Charleston community partners, civic minded students, and the faculty and staff of our institution. It is a more dynamic means of outreach, allowing for communication that relies on dialogue between multiple parties. By moving away from an authoritative mode of communication, in which the CCE was the sole voice, this new tool allows for any party to announce or suggest an event, comment on past events, receive up-to-date details of upcoming projects, and view media created by our student participants. It is hoped that by creating a more attractive website and means of communication, interest in our programs and events—including Bonner Leader events—will rise. This already has and will continue to lead to a greater known presence of the Bonner Leaders program on our campus and in our community.
The Bonner Leader program has been more active and eager in embracing new technologies than has its host office, however the novelty of many of these technologies has hindered how swiftly the program has been able to effectively utilize these tools to reach out to the community and the campus. The Leaders have filmed hours of footage using the FlipCam in order to participate in the Bonner Video project. However, it was soon discovered that none of the members had any experience in creating and editing digital videos. While this has not stopped the Bonners from participating in the video project, the learn-as-you-go approach has meant that our ideas for new videos far outpace our actual ability to create them. As such, social media sites that rely on video—most notably YouTube and Vimeo—have not been used much. That said, we have created a YouTube channel and are ready to dive headfirst into that social media site once we are suitably proficient at creating videos.
With other forms of Web 2.0 technologies, the Bonner Leader program has excelled. We have created Facebook events to advertise Engage and Empower as well as our Enrique Moronoes discussion, with tremendous results. The ease of use of Facebook, and the student population’s affinity towards this medium, has meant that attendance for those events we advertised on Facebook has been higher than expected, especially for those events which had to occur without much prior planning. Various wikis have been useful targeting faculty and staff in ways that social media and networking sites may have not.
Our participation in the PolicyOptions Wiki project helps establish that the Bonner Leader program is more than a social and service program, but a program that has serious academic ramifications to the students involved. Our own Bonner Wiki serves to exhibit personal, academic, and service profiles of each Bonner Leader, and is an attractive resource for any member of the College of Charleston community wishing to know more about our program. For faculty and staff that may not be tuned into Facebook and YouTube, the wiki sites can serve as an effective outreach tool. Campus Issue ProfilesAdd links to your completed or draft campus issue profiles here:
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