Connecting Service and Politics

Exploration (First-Year) Level

Goals/Objectives | Skill Development | Training & Enrichment | Cornerstones | Academic Connections

Goals/Objectives

As you explore your new campus, community, Bonner Program, and service sites, there is lots of opportunity to explore politics. In this first stage, you will explore the community partners that work with your Bonner Program. With your Bonner classmates, you will be able to reflect on these experience to deepen your sense of civic and political engagement. Through this exploration and group reflection, your class will grow together to understand more about your campus community and its needs.

Skill Development

The first stage will help you develop the following skills, knowledge and values: 

     • place-based knowledge of the community in which you're serving

     • understanding the community's assets and needs

     • beginning to grapple with the complexity of issues that community partners are working to address

     • identifying local opportunities to be involved in connecting service and political action, such as through neighborhood associations, school boards, city councils, and doing public education with local (and state) public officials and representatives.

Training, Enrichment & Reflection

As a Bonner, you'll be able to supplement your service work with meaningful reflection and activities. Through specific skill trainings, educational and spiritual enrichment activities, and personal and group reflection, you will be able to think about your community exploration in lots of new ways. These activities will help you develop the skills listed above that emphasize determining your place in a new community. The following sequence of events could be useful as a model for a year-long commitment to exploring the first level of civic agency. 

Cornerstone Activities

Connecting service and politics can also be accomplished through preexisting Bonner Program activities such as the First Year Trip, monthly and class-based meetings, site-based teams, and more. Click here to see how to utilize these program features to achieve the goals and acquire the skills laid out in this exploration stage.

Academic Connections

Here's some ideas for how service and politics can connect in the classroom and complement service work to create a well-rounded developmental experience toward civic engagement. 

• Community Leadership Course: an introductory level course that includes history of the community, leadership case-study (based on educational leadership, political leadership, etc. in the community), reflection, readings, and meaningful preparation for the First Year Trip.

• Case Study: teams of students pick certain policy/issue areas and investigate past and present discourse and debate around community leadership. They then present their progress throughout the course. (involved basic research/writing workshops, meeting with community members, presentation, paper). 

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