How Can YOU Get Involved in Academic Connections?!
What is Academic Connections? | How To Get Involved: Step by Step|Resources
At the heart of the Bonner Model and structure is Academic Connections. Ensuring that college students have access to education and oppurtunities to serve, Bonner's idea is to connect service with learning. It's not enough to just talk about poverty in the classroom. To go out and experience what it does and who it affects makes a world of difference. To truly understand and hopefully change issues, there must be a connection between what one learns and what one does.
Before you go looking around at the pages on different types of Academic Connections, take a look at this page. It will give you a brief introduction to different ways of connecting academics to service as well as how to get your campus to do so. So, enjoy and good luck!
What is Academic Connections?
Get to know the different ways in which your classroom experience can be connected to your service!
- These are some of the different types of Academic Connections that can take place on your campus. Click the highlighted terms to see their full pages
- Service Learning-Connecting academics to service by links (such as assignments, research projects, and reflection activities) that often happen in the classroom, with the opportunity to earn academic credit.
- Community Based Research-A sophisticated form of service-learning, CBR allows students and faculty to explore questions created by community partners and helps them to improve communities or find solutions to pressing issues through tangible research, often done in the context of a course or assignment. Also, students often can work with their community partner and propose their own independent projects, then find a faculty member who will sponsor or advise it.
- Policy Options-An initiative, driven by PolicyOptions.org to enable everyone—especially students and faculty—to have access to public policy information regarding issues of interest in their communities. Students learn how to research and write issue briefs that trace the public policy implications and solutions to given issues.
- Civic Engagement Minor-At some campuses, students can enroll in a certificate, minor, concentration, or major in the field of civic engagement or civic leadership, which provides you with a way for connecting your academic work and research with service over multiple years.
Distinction between Service Learning and CBR:
- Service Learning incorporates the idea of service as pertaining to one area of education. For example, in a class you may be learning about poverty, so for your service learning project, you would volunteer at a soup kitchen to witness and experience what poverty is like and reflect on it through your course work.
- Community Based Research (CBR) is more focused on particular questions surrounding issues, such as poverty. For example, a soup kitchen in your community may want to know why they serve more men than women and children. Their concern may be that women don't wish to go to that soup kitchen with their children for assistance because of apprehension due to the extreme volume of men. They may come up with a research project that could yield analysis which allows them to understand why this is the way it is and what can be done to alleviate that apprehension so as to ensure that all members of the community's needs are met. This question could be given to a professor who would then integrate the research into a course assignment or create a course in which the semester's work would include research to help that community partner. With that answer, the community partner can then work on modifying their program and improving the attractiveness of their services to women who have children and are in need. The project benefits the students, faculty, campus, the community partner and the community.
- Both Service Learning and CBR are important aspects of Academic Connections. Service Learning connects service to the classroom while CBR provides the community with academic work that addresses its needs and questions. Both are potentially powerful tools that can work in conjunction to improve the organization's work and capacity.
How To Get Involved: Step by Step
Want to know how to bring these connections to your campus? Here's a guide to help you get these programs up and running on your campus!
- Consider these steps. Please note: the Community Based Research page will have more in-depth implementation strategies.
- Realize Your Own Power- Know that you have the power to make a difference. If you want to see a Community Based Research Course on your campus, you can propose it, find a faculty member or department to support you, and work to make it happen.
- Create a Partnership With a Professor-Find a professor on campus who wants to incorporate service learning or research into their curriculum and get them on board with you. Share the leadership. Find ways for faculty to provide their expertise in their field to help your ideas grow.
- Design a Trip- Map out a place you would like students and faculty to go to get to understand why service learning and research is important in your community. Have a professor or faculty member guide you in the right direction by suggesting good places to go or partners with whom to work. Remember to get students oriented on the subject matter you will be facing beforehand as well as doing a reflection piece afterwards to ensure that the right message got across.
- Make an Academic Connections Board-If you're unsure of what kind of Academic Connections you want to make, create a board with students and faculty to see what kind of consesus there can be. This will ensure that everyone agrees on what the school needs and would benefit from.
- Create a Course/Class-There are ways in which you, as a student can create your own service based class/course. If you are not happy with how response is going to your ideas, see what the guidlines are for students developing courses and work to make your own!
- Develop a Minor or Certificate-Work with your school to develop a Civic Engagement minor or Certificate program that could ensure the civic engagement model would accessible and have benefits for interested students!
Do you know where your campus is in its Academic Connections? Look at the chart below and see how you can bring your campus to the next level of integration!
| |
Level One
(lowest levels)
|
Level Two
|
Level Three
|
Level Four
(highest levels)
|
| Student Involvement |
Student involvement is mostly part of extracurricular student life activities |
Campus has organized support for volunteer work (like a center) |
Students have opportunity for extra credit, internships, practicum experiences |
Service-learning courses integrated into the curriculum; student involvement in community based research |
| Faculty Involvement |
Campus duties; committees; disciplinary focus |
Pro bono (volunteer) consulting; community volunteerism |
Tenured/senior faculty pursue community-based research; some teach service-learning courses |
Community research and service-learning a high priority for faculty; interdisciplinary and collaborative work |
| Community Involvement |
Random or limited individual or group involvement |
Community representation on advisory boards for departments or schools |
Community influences campus through active partnership or part-time teaching |
Community involved in designing, conducting and evaluating research and service-learning
|
Resources:
Here is a list of some scholarly articles, provided by Compact.org on civic engagement in the college community- Click Here
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