“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”, declared President Kennedy.

Ghandi implored, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has,” noted Margaret Mead.

These often used quotations are quite popular within the student affairs community because they can be interpreted and applied to the work that we do with students on a daily basis. It should then come as no surprise that a fair amount of institutions of higher education have developed or are currently developing programs solely dedicated to community service and service-learning, most especially when referencing the quotations above.

These programs are designed to target the issues affecting the communities in which the institutions are located. For example: 1) The Volunteer and Service Leadership Center at the University of Texas works with non-profit organizations in Austin, Texas  2) The Arizona Blue Chip Program at the University of Arizona works with individuals and groups in the Tucson, Arizona community

These two institutions are dedicated to not only serving their local communities, but instilling in the students an understanding about why service to others is important and invaluable. The faculty and staff of programs and centers similar to the two listed above are taking initiative to give back to their communities.

In light of President Obama’s “United We Serve” campaign coupled with Americorps, the idea and valuation of community service is garnering more attention. Educating students about the need for service should be commended and lauded, not devalued because it does not apply to ‘in-classroom’ experiences. As such, service to one’s community can be related to ‘in-classroom’ learning because depending on the class, it can always be asked, “where does the need for service originate?” – which relates to business, sociology, economics, and political science just to name a few. Hence, an influx in service-learning programs that not only allow students to perform community service, but ties in the academic component of evaluating the need and purpose for why the service was performed in the first place.

These are exciting times ahead in the field of higher education and student affairs due to the increase in service-learning and community service programs that address the needs of not only the surrounding institution’s community, but the state, country, and globe.

Tags: community service, community service program, Service Learning, Volunteering

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Community Involvement, Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.