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Katie Scollin a graduate assistant in the Office of Student Life, is community services coordinator.
The Office of Student Life has begun a community services initiative. What is its mission?
The mission of the Community Service Office within Student Life is to engage students outside the classroom with community service activities. We provide support for individuals or student groups seeking community-service experiences, both on or off campus. Research has demonstrated the many benefits of involving students with campus activities. We believe that connecting students to their campus and to the extended Buffalo community through service-related opportunities provides them with solid life experience and is essentially a win-win scenario for everyone involved.
What types of opportunities for community service do you provide?
We try to collaborate with various offices and thus broaden our outreach. For example, we are teaming up with the Division of Athletics for the Feb. 4 home basketball game and hosting more than 100 children from the Big Brother/Big Sister organization, where we will pair UB students with the "littles" for the event. We are planning with Student Activities a UB cleanup on North and South campuses, as well as the University Heights area, on April 23 as part of Senior Celebration. From March 14- 20, we are taking 14 students to Washington, D.C., for an "Alternative Spring Break" to serve and learn from the poor by working at a soup kitchen and speaking with representatives on Capital Hill who are concerned with hunger and social justice issues. We hope to sponsor an event the weekend before graduation where students will collect usable goods—things that ordinarily would end up in the trash—and donate them to the Gloria Parks Community Center for its annual end-of-summer yard sale. New Student Programs offers a Freshmen Experience Class (UB101), and I spoke to a number of classes about the various ways freshmen can get involved with service activities—from donating blood to helping a child learn to read. The office produces a bi-weekly e-newsletter in an effort to respond to students who are not able to drop by the Student Union and inquire about getting involved in community service. Lastly, we'd like to establish stronger working relationships with student organizations that have service within their mission, as well as any organization that is interested in participating in service initiatives.
Can faculty and staff volunteer for community service projects through your office?
Absolutely! We welcome any interaction with faculty and staff. By offering our students opportunities to interact with faculty and staff outside the classroom, we can provide them with a more complete education while also teaching them, through the example of faculty and staff, that civic responsibility doesn't end at graduation. Any of the previously mentioned service opportunities is open to faculty and staff participation. If a faculty or staff member has a suggestion for a collaborative community service initiative or a question about how to get involved, I would be more than happy to help.
Is there a difference between "community service" and "service learning?"
Yes, there are very distinct differences. Community service is pretty straightforward and is primarily what we are focused on offering here in Student Life, while service-learning is a bit more involved. Campus Compact, a national coalition of close to 1,000 colleges committed to the civic purposes of higher education, defines community service as an "action taken to meet the needs of others and better the community as a whole." However, service-learning has three components: Activities are "focused on meeting a human need in the community, have key academic and/or civic objectives to be achieved through combining service with learning, and have ample opportunities for students to reflect on their experience…" At this point, our primary focus in Student Life is on community service. The Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Urban Affairs is a great link to service-learning initiatives and related internships.
Why is it important for students to participate in community service projects?
We only have four or five years from the time students arrive on campus until they graduate to teach them to experience the world differently than they did when they came to UB. When students step into the lives of those they serve, they learn lessons about people that they don't forget in an afternoon. There is so much potential to change lives, communities and nations if students learn or develop their sense of civic responsibility. As is the case with teaching, community service has a ripple effect. The impact is immense and difficult to measure, yet we believe in Student Life that community service is a vital component to a college education. Alexander W. Astin, professor of higher education at the University of California, Los Angeles and director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, reported in a 1996 study that there was a "direct link" between the amount of time a student spends volunteering during college and the commitment he or she has to volunteering post-graduation. In addition to being more civic minded, Astin also found that students who volunteered were more likely to attend graduate school, donate to their alma mater and assist others in need.
What question do you wish I had asked, and how would you have answered it?
Is there sound pedagogy behind student involvement with volunteerism? Yes! Ernest L. Boyer, Sr. served as chancellor of SUNY, U.S. commissioner of education and president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In 1990, a special report from the Carnegie Foundation was published titled "Campus Life: In Search of Community." In the report, Boyer asks how we should proceed into the new decade and beyond, considering what at the time was a faltering sense of community on campuses across the nation. "What is needed…is a larger, more integrative vision of community in higher education, one that focuses not on the length of time students spend on campus, but the quality of the encounter, and relates not only to social activities, but to the classroom, too. The goal we see is to clarify both academic and civic standards, and above all, to define with some precision the enduring values that undergird a community of learning." Six principles were proposed to serve as a foundation for any aspiring college. "A college or university is an educationally purposeful community, a place where faculty and students share academic goals and work together to strengthen teaching and learning on the campus. Second, a college or university is an open community, a place where freedom of expression is uncompromisingly protected and where civility is powerfully affirmed. Third, a college or university is a just community, a place where the sacredness of the person is honored and where diversity is aggressively pursued. Fourth, a college or university is a disciplined community, a place where individuals accept their obligations to the group and where well-defined governance procedures guide behavior for the common good. Fifth, a college or university is a caring community, a place where the well being of each member is sensitively supported and where service to others is encouraged. Sixth, a college or university is a celebrative community, one in which the heritage of the institution is remembered and where rituals affirming both tradition and change are widely shared." An excellent and inspiring follow-up book was edited by William M. McDonald and published in 2002, titled "Creating Campus Community: In Search of Ernest Boyer's Legacy." It essentially is a case study of six colleges that took up Boyer's challenge and examined their respective campuses to determine how they could integrate those six key principles. The colleges attempted to teach their students to distinguish between rights and responsibilities, to realize the value of diversity within their community and to appreciate the balance between self-interest and self-sacrifice. Boyer's sentiments and McDonald's followup challenge me to find ways to connect students with their community because on paper and in practice, students benefit.