by Devin Race, Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, USA

Abstract

Election jurisdictions have strong reason to recruit college students to work at the polls in order to provide a service learning opportunity for the students and increase the quality of elections. This paper uses data from the largest college poll worker program to date (over 1500 students, with around 50% from community colleges), run in Chicago over the course of three elections. The scale of the program and empirical methods used make it unique in the current literature on these programs. The results show that bilingual students and community college students were uniquely engaged, email and in-person recruitment was the best way to reach students, and that election efficiency was improved, as measured by the time it took precincts with college students to perform technology-intensive tasks. This research guides service-learning practitioners seeking to run and advocate for student poll worker programs.

Introduction

Poll workers are the backbone of the voting process in America. They are the people responsible for checking in voters, ensuring that election procedures are followed, and delivering the results to the election authority. College student poll worker recruitment has positive benefits both as service learning for the students and as a way to improve election efficiency.

Students learn the role of “street-level bureaucrats” who are responsible for the details and decisions involved in the final stages of implementing law (Cobb 2006). Recent randomized field research also suggests that participating in a civic activity like this—even if it is done without previous political interest—acts as a catalyst for adopting new civic attitudes and potentially greater civic participation (Olson 2015).

The civic engagement of serving as a poll worker is especially important for the traditionally less engaged population of community colleges, who were a focus of the program in Chicago that is studied in this paper. Seventy two percent of the 120,000 students at the City Colleges of Chicago are Black or Latino and 69-92% receive some sort of financial aid (Diversity 2015, College Navigator 2015). Being low-income or a person of color (and especially both together) is associated with reduced civic participation (Frasure & Williams 2002). That disparity is fueled by differences in who gets asked to participate: African-Americans and Latinos are less likely than whites to be asked to engage in civic life (“Unequal Opportunities” 2006). Election authorities and program managers can choose who they ask to participate, and they should take the opportunity to ask for the participation of those who are traditionally less engaged. College student recruitment programs provide that opportunity.

President Obama’s Commission on Election Administration—established in response to widespread administration problems in the 2012 election—recommended that election jurisdictions recruit college poll workers (Bauer & Ginsberg 2014). According to the Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC’s) 2014 National Election and Voting Survey (EAVS), 45% of jurisdictions report that finding sufficient poll workers is somewhat or very difficult (EAVS 2014). The technological sophistication of voting machines demands new skills from poll workers, which makes recruitment even more difficult, and many older poll workers express lower levels of comfort with election technology (Cobb 2006).

Recruiting college students to be poll workers taps a new source of poll workers, and they may also bring skills needed to deal with the modern technology that they grew up with.

This paper evaluates a college student recruitment program run in Chicago for the 2014 General Election and the 2015 Municipal and Runoff Elections. The non-profit organization the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (CLCCRUL) went to college campuses to recruit the students and delivered the applications to the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners (Board of Elections) which trained the students and placed them at sites on Election Day. Students were paid $170 for attending a 3.5-hour training session plus working all day on Election Day. Students were placed into the city’s standard poll worker job, which involves setting up the polling place at the start of the day, checking in voters and handing out ballots, and then packing up and transmitting the election results from their precinct at the end of the day.

CLCCRUL recruited at every college and university in Chicago, with an emphasis on community colleges—the program collected 3,535 applications and 1,578 students served on election day (49% of whom were community college students). Over 500 students served two or more times. The recruitment program was managed by one full-time staff member at CLCCRUL and a variety of outreach methods were employed to contact students, from emails to in-person events. A full breakdown of methods is included in Part V.

This program is unique because it is larger than any of the programs funded by the Election Assistance Commission’s grant program for projects of this kind, and most likely larger than any such program to date (compared to all the federally funded programs for which reports are available (“Help America Vote College Program” 2015)). Moreover, students were tracked over the course of three elections in the same program, allowing researchers to measure factors associated with remaining committed, not just with showing up once.

Research Questions

There is currently little evidence to back up the claims of the benefits of college poll workers and to guide program managers seeking to run these programs, aside from small-scale reports and subjective survey results (“Central Connecticut” 2013; “Central Ohio” 2010; Cobb 2006; “Help America Vote College Program at the University of Baltimore” 2009; Getachew & Senteno 2008; “Golden Key” 2009; “A Guidebook” 2007; “Henry Ford” 2009; Israel et al. 2006; Jones 2009; “New York Public Interest” 2009; “Show-Me New” 2009). This paper supplements the existing literature by using the extensive dataset from the Chicago Program to answer the following questions:

• Which recruitment methods are the most effective for reaching students and getting them to show up on Election Day?
  • The best recruitment methods were email, in-person recruitment tables, and referral from a friend (in that order of priority)
• What types of students are likely to serve as poll workers and to remain committed to further service?
  • Bilingual students and community college students were uniquely likely to be highly committed.
• What impact do college student programs have on the efficiency of election administration?
  • Students were able to solve staffing shortfalls in three city wards and were able to do technology-intensive tasks more quickly.

The questions and answers here have practical implications for program managers and election jurisdictions, but they will also be of interest to scholars interested in seeing what this program tells us about patterns in who is civically engaged among American youth.

Recruitment Methods

At most schools, the recruiter attempted to use every method, often starting with an in-person event and then using the time on campus to connect with professors and administrators.

Figure 1: Number of Poll Workers by Recruitment Method

This shows the number of students who actually served on Election Day, broken down by recruitment method. Recruitment table should be distinguished from career/service/involvement event. Both involve standing at a table, but career/service/involvement events involve many other people also standing at tables nearby.

Emails were more effective than the other recruitment methods. Emails sent to the entire student body were the most effective, although program managers should pursue every channel (the Chicago Program also sent out through student service/activity offices, academic departments, student government, and public relations staff). The 480 students recruitment through this method were recruited through a total of 20-40 emails sent out each cycle.

The second best recruitment method was a tabling. Program managers should note that big activities fairs were no more effective (and often less effective) as just setting up a table in a well-trafficked area of campus. Students at the activities/involvement events were likely in the mindset of eating the free candy and signing up for everything without much thought to whether they’d actually follow through. It is advisable to do a tabling event of some kind even if the program managers have already sent an email to students: the Chicago Program often found students who hadn’t heard of the program even after sending out an email.

The third most effective method of recruiting poll workers was through referrals from friends. The Chicago Program offered incentives for referrals: Anyone who recruited a friend was entered into a raffle and the person who recruited the most friends won a prize. These prizes were modest ($30-$50 cash or gift cards) and required only the time necessary to send those emails and to update students about who was currently winning the “best recruiter” prize. It was a non-time intensive way to get over a hundred additional poll workers.

Program managers and election jurisdictions should know that many college students who sign up initially don’t show up, and should plan accordingly (or find a way to re-confirm those who have signed up). Regardless of recruitment method, around 40-50% of students who signed up actually turned up on Election Day (except for students recruited through involvement events, which had even higher rates of attrition).

These results contradict some commonly held assumptions about recruitment that exist in the literature right now and point toward effective strategies for recruitment.

Most of the reports and research about college student poll workers (and poll workers in general) claim that “face-to-face recruitment and personal contact are the most effective and successful recruitment methods” (“A Guidebook” 2007). Similar claims are repeated in many of the existing research reports (“Central Ohio” 2010; “Golden Key” 2009; “Show Me New” 2009). That claim is backed up by research on other sorts of political activity, like protest or demonstrations, where repeated empirical study shows that personal connection truly is influential (McAdam 1986; Schussman & Soule 2005).

But those results are misapplied in the context of recruiting college poll workers. Non-in-person methods recruited more people, and the applicants they brought in were just as likely to show up after applying as those recruited through personal contact. It could be true that personal contact is more influential than email for motivating a randomly selected person to show up at the polls. However, program managers do not have a practical interest in maximally motivating randomly selected people. Instead, they have a practical interest in using methods that reach a large number of people who turn up on Election Day.

In the case of more ideological political activity, personal contact may be crucially important because one needs to be motivated into action. But that kind of motivation is less important for poll workers. Students get paid to work at the polls, which may be all they need to motivate them after being informed of the opportunity (Israel et al. 2006).

The order of the recruitment methods in Figure 1 is the rough order of priority that program managers should follow in planning recruitment. The methods with the highest volume of applicants were also time-effective: sending out an email has an immediate huge reach. Standing at a table in an area of campus with heavy foot traffic produced a very reliable 50 applications per two-hour engagement.

Civic Engagement and Student Attributes

Civic engagement differs according to various features of a student’s background. These patterns should be helpful to guide program manager’s recruitment priorities. Prioritization decisions can be made on the basis of normative concern for who ought to be offered this opportunity or the pragmatic need to recruit large numbers of people. The results presented here show that these normative and pragmatic concerns are both well-served by recruiting community college students and bilingual students.

CLCCRUL was particularly interested in recruiting community college students as an effort to close the civic engagement gap that exists by race, income, and level of education. As a pragmatic matter, program managers have an interest in recruiting students who will serve in multiple elections because those students are a better return on the investment necessary to bring them in. Community college students were the best source of poll workers who would commit to serving multiple times after serving once: 51% of community college students who served in one election served in another one (329/651) compared to only 32% (219/688) of other students.

Several factors could explain these results:

• Community college students are more likely to be from the local area, and so may feel a stronger connection to it (“College Navigator” 2015).
• Community college students may be more interested in earning money for the day than students from four-year colleges who may have families paying their way (“Increasing College Opportunity” 2014).
• The staff at Chicago’s City Colleges were excellent recruiting partners. At several of the colleges, the Chicago Program was able to recruit via a recruitment table and a campus-wide email for both election cycles.

Recruitment of community college students thus promotes civic engagement in underrepresented groups and is a way to find students who will commit to multiple terms of service.

To support a healthy democracy, we must have bilingual workers at the polls to ensure that voters who speak a language other than English have equal access to their right to vote. Bilingual workers are also legally required in some jurisdictions by section 203 of the Voting Rights Act. Moreover, there exists a civic engagement gap in immigrant populations similar to that for African-Americans and people of color, which is produced in part by the failure of traditional civic institutions to ask for the participation of immigrant communities (DeSipio 2011).

Many election jurisdictions struggle with bilingual worker recruitment (EAVS 2014, 255-58). College campuses are excellent sources of bilingual students. In Chicago, 25% of college poll workers were bilingual (378 students—the data does not allow us to know whether the bilingual students are immigrants or what their first language is). There are many culture-specific academic departments, offices, and student groups on campuses that make it easy to find bilingual students who are excited to serve their community. The results also show that these students are particularly likely to turn out multiple times and to be highly engaged.

Figure 2 displays the engagement of bilingual students by showing that a higher percentage of those students turned out at least once, served in all three elections, and were “highly engaged.” Here, “highly engaged” is measured by whether the student provided in-depth answers in response to an optional survey aimed at improving the program. It turns out that in the Chicago Program, the differences between bilingual and monolingual students was being driven by the Spanish-speaking students, who comprised the large majority of bilingual students.

Figure 2: Spanish-speaking Student Engagement

This table shows the number of students who met each engagement benchmark, and the percentage within that group that met the benchmark. Students were designated as “highly engaged” if they gave in-depth responses to an optional survey. Across all these measures of participation, Spanish-speaking students were more engaged.

An explanation for higher levels of engagement is that bilingual students felt connected to the community they were serving and felt that serving as a translator was a vital service. The following student survey responses are illustrative. Students are listed with their university and the neighborhood where they served:

For me the best part of my day being an election judge was being able to assist Spanish-speaking citizens and also see the enthusiasm in people coming out to vote… that is what [influences] us young adults to be involved in politics and expand our knowledge on it.

(Northeastern Illinois University Student), Little Village

I was very excited to be part of Student Leaders in Elections and to be a judge because I recently became a US citizen. I was influenced by seeing how my Mexican community needs  more involvement in the elections and signed up as a bilingual judge.

(Harold Washington College Student), Pilsen

Even though the ballots had Spanish translations, I enjoyed reading the ballots for those who did not understand English or were unable to read small letters.

(DePaul University Student), Humboldt Park

Being one of the election judges in my precinct showed the difference that I made in my community as I was able to help both voters that spoke English and Spanish.

(DePaul University Student), Back of the Yards

Though we do not know how many of the bilingual students were immigrants, the quotes from students above are consistent with research on civic participation in immigrant populations. Analysis of National Exit Poll and Census data finds that immigrants who become citizens are more likely to vote than U.S.-born citizens and second- or third-generation immigrant citizens (DeSipio 2011, 1189-213). People who went through the onerous naturalization process have done more to gain their right to participate, and so may be more inclined to exercise it.

Jurisdictions already have clear reasons to recruit bilingual students in order to ensure equal access to the vote. The results from the Chicago Program add another reason: bilingual students are more likely than others to follow through to Election Day after applying, to remain committed for multiple cycles, and to be highly engaged on the day.

A regression analysis can help determine which recruitment methods or students characteristics are significant in causing the results outlined above. A complete explanation of the quantitative method and the limitations and caveats for interpreting the results can be found in the full version of this research (Race 2015).

The regression is especially helpful for isolating factors that surprisingly were not significant. Neither GPA nor affiliation with a political party (as opposed to no affiliation) appeared to be significant in any of the regressions. It might have been expected that people who have a party identification might be more likely to commit to more service, or that students with a higher GPA might be more likely to apply only if they were confident they could serve, but that does not seem to pan out in practice.

There are some notably significant factors as well, however. Once controlling for age, college, and in-person versus online contact, the difference in the likelihood of Spanish-speakers showing up three times is even larger than it appeared to be in the simple comparison. Largely, though, the regression confirms the comparisons made before: most recruitment methods have about the same turnout rate from application to Election Day and Spanish-speaking and community college students are more engaged in the ways outlined before, even when controlling for other factors about the students.

Election Efficiency

This section presents evidence that college students increase election efficiency in two ways: by working efficiently with technology and by staffing shortfalls.

Earlier reports have suggested, anecdotally, that college students might be the most comfortable with new voting technologies given that they have used modern gadgets since childhood (Cobb 2006). This is the first attempt to use empirical methods to test that hypothesis. That hypothesis is tested using the data from the Chicago Program on the amount of time it took precincts to compile and convey the election results from a precinct back to Election Central after the polls closed for the night (“Results Transmission”).

If students helped precincts transmit results at the end of the night more quickly, it is likely that they were more efficient on other technical tasks throughout the day too, because Results Transmission is one of the most technologically involved parts of the job, requiring poll workers to deal with every piece of voting technology (“Judge of Election” 2014). In the survey, several people said that they found Results Transmission to be one of the toughest parts of the process and one even suggested that there should be a separate training session just for the end of day tasks. As such, efficiency in Results Transmission is likely a good proxy for general technological efficiency (the best way to measure this would be to do a polling place observation study where poll workers were timed doing various tasks, a possible project for further research).

Speedy results transmission is also independently valued by election administrators. Jim Allen, Communications Director for the Board of Elections, said “accurate and quick reporting of results fits with the goal… of transparency. Healthy election systems are marked by participation, transparency, accuracy, and security. The stakeholders—voters and campaigns—tend to have more confidence in outcomes if they can see results reported swiftly that can be matched up with participation data from in-precinct, absentee, and early voting” (Allen 2015).

The data from the Chicago Program shows that precincts with college students transmitted results more quickly.  This conclusion was drawn by comparing the Results Transmission times in the 2014 and 2015 elections with those of the 2012 General Election to see whether precincts with college students showed greater improvement than those without students (a difference-in-differences design). Since many factors influence the efficiency of a polling place, this design is helpful because it only compares each precinct to that exact same precinct in 2012. This also helps account for the fact that students’ assignment to precincts was not random: students could choose on their application where they wanted to work (either by specifying a ward or by saying they wanted to be near their college or home) and the Board of Elections assigned students according to their needs in various areas. A complete description of the methodology and its limitations is available in the full report (Race 2015).

Students were responsible for saving 4-12 minutes during Results Transmission, which corresponds to a 9-32% improvement relative to the average transmission time of around 30 minutes. Figure 3 shows the percentage improvements for precincts with one or two college students on each of the Election Days in 2014-15. There were a few hundred precincts with college students in each of the comparison groups for each of the elections.

Figure 3: Percentage Improvement in Time to Transmit Results for Precincts with Students

* indicates that these differences were statistically significant, explained more in the full report (Race 2015).

Figure 3 shows the estimated percentage decrease in transmission time that can be attributed to the presence of college students in the precinct. The percentages are the result of a difference-in-differences design: the precincts with college students improved more since 2012 than the precincts without college students, and the numbers reported here are based on the differences in the level of improvement. Each difference is shown as a percentage of the average results transmission time for that election. The importance of college students is suggested by the fact that the effect increases substantially when a second college student is in the polling place.

The fact that precincts with college students transmitted results faster supports the hypothesis that college students (and probably other young people) have a comfort with technology that makes them assets to a modern polling place. This quantitative finding is also confirmed by a few survey responses that discussed the end of the day. This response by a student from DePaul University is a good example:

The other judges […] had no desire to work with the technology involved in transmitting the results, so that fell solely on my shoulders.

This line of explanation is further supported by the increased time savings when two students were present. Two students who each had some level of technological comfort could work together to problem-solve. Plus, students may not have felt comfortable offering their suggestions without another student around to back them up: the two-student program was started because after the General Election, students reported feeling like they were the odd one out in their precinct and that their suggestions were not taken seriously.

The comparison of averages between precincts with and without students holds up at higher levels of statistical rigor. The full report runs this same comparison as a regression and finds nearly identity results (Race 2015).

The conclusion on results transmission times is that, barring unobserved explanations for the variation, there are substantively and statistically significant results that make it plausible that college students contribute to increased efficiency both at the end of the day and on similar technical tasks throughout the day.

In addition to reducing results transmission time, students are able to serve in a wide range of polling places. The traditional pool of poll workers consists of longtime community residents who have served for many years. There are many advantages to this reliable group of workers, but one disadvantage is that those people tend to want to serve in their own community and so cannot move to other precincts to cover staffing shortfalls. Footloose college students can be sent where they are needed, and the placements for the 2015 Municipal Election took advantage of that.

The Board of Elections identified four wards in the city that consistently had shortages of poll workers. All of these wards had six or more teams of extra standby poll workers deployed to fill in for 2014 General Election. For the 2015 Municipal Election, we were able to completely eliminate the need for standby poll workers by fully staffing the shortfall with college students in three out of the four targeted wards (the shortfall was not solved in one of the wards, but the number of standby teams was still significantly reduced).

Two strategies were employed to get students to areas in need:

• Campus Program: The University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics provided transportation and support for its students to go anywhere in Chicago. These students were able to work in a ward twelve miles away that would have been inaccessible by public transit in the early morning.
• Voluntary Sign-Up: Students were told during the application that it would be helpful to the City if they chose to work in particular wards. They were given the incentive that they could name a friend that they would like to work with if they chose to work in one of those wards. In total, 99 of the poll workers on Election Day were placed into areas of need through this program.

For jurisdictions considering implementing these strategies, the voluntary sign-up strategy took minimal effort. A notice was posted on the website and students indicated on their application where they wanted to be placed. The Campus Program strategy could be used by election jurisdictions that can develop a strong partnership with a local university. Otherwise, the logistical costs might be overwhelming. The Chicago Program’s Campus Program would not have been possible without the partnership of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, which handled the transportation costs, Election Day meals for students, and the arrangement of all logistics. In whichever form, though, using college students to shore up worker shortages is a way to take advantage of a unique characteristic of student workers in the service of improving elections.

Action Plan

This sectionsummarizes the research results, lessons, and tips for program directors seeking to run a college student recruitment program. The main practical implication for program managers from this report are that they should target community college students and bilingual students in particular, and should use emails and in-person tabling as their primary recruitment strategies. The following plan goes into more depth on each stage of the process.

Starting early (months in advance) is ideal, and recommended by most program managers. However, a late start date does not doom the program. The Chicago Program did not begin any work until a month and a half before the recruitment deadline.

• Set a recruitment target, informed by the expected attrition rate (around 50%).
• Establish messaging. In the Chicago Program, we decided to promote the opportunity to improve the democratic process as well as the opportunity to get fairly good pay for a day’s work in order to catch all types of students.
• Map out the recruitment pipeline to make sure that the system for students signing up, having their applications approved, signing up for training, and being placed on Election Day, are all clear so that you can plan ahead for the next step.
  • In particular, the Chicago Program found that the Board of Elections was not planning for a high attrition rate, and in the first cycle of the program, they placed students in polling places before they confirmed that the students would attend.
• Determine research goals so that you know what information you want to collect about students to analyze later, and build this into the system.
• Develop visual identity through posters, website, flyers, etc.
• Ensure data quality in the establishment of the system for gathering information about the students by requiring confirmation of email addresses, making it possible to edit responses without submitting a duplicate application, and setting up required fields.

The study also gives guidance on recruiting college student poll workers. These methods are listed in order of priority, based on the research on the Chicago Program.

• Identify the people who can send emails to large groups of students. This may be a dean, academic advisor, department chair, student government president, extracurricular office, career office, or publicity director. These people can be hard to reach and should be pursued through email, phone, and just showing up to their offices.
  • Tailor your messaging: Many of these people (especially at larger universities) will feel that their students are already bombarded with emails and will need to be persuaded that it’s worth promoting this program. For cultural/diversity centers, you can emphasize the program as a way to close the civic engagement gap. For language departments, translators are needed to ensure equal democratic access. For publicity directors, successful recruitment numbers are a way to publicly tout the civic engagement of their students. For the career office, students will have a government service line on their resume.
• Book in-person recruitment opportunities. The timeline of November elections will put recruitment at the beginning of the school year, so there will likely be involvement fairs where you can set up a booth. However, remember that such fairs have low yields of students who actually serve, so also book recruitment table opportunities outside of an event context that will allow better interactions with interested students.

• Reach bilingual students through student cultural groups, language departments, ethnic studies departments, religious organizations, and offices of international students.
• Use peer motivation. Being recruited by a friend is just as good at finding students who will turn out, and it is an easy way to increase numbers. Use “affiliate marketing” techniques like entering students into a raffle if they refer a friend and offering a prize to the person who recruits the most people.
• Pursue other strategies. The strategies recommended above were the most successful and time-effective for the Chicago program. The other strategies employed included:
• Distribution of flyers and posters
• Online job boards and ads (Indeed, LinkedIn, Idealist, Facebook)
• Presentations to classes and student groups (including classes where the professor offered extra credit)
• Creation of a dedicated website (slechicago.org)
• Posting on campus social media
• Incorporation into service-learning curricula

For further ideas, see the EAC’s guide (“A Guidebook” 2007).

To give a sense of the amount of work involved to get the results in the Chicago Program: For each election, the recruiter held around 25 in-person recruitment events at campuses around the city and contacted 50-70 college professors and administrators to help promote the program.

Finally, the Chicago project provides lessons for follow-up with college student poll workers.

• Keep in continuous contact with students who have applied. Students need to be reminded and reassured that their application has been received and accepted and need to be informed of the next steps. Build a FAQ page on your dedicated website.
• Make it easy to withdraw from the program using an online form, and remind students that crucial Election Day decisions depend on knowing how many of them will actually be showing up. This reduces the logistical difficulties created by the high attrition between sign-up and Election Day.

Conclusion

The results from the Chicago Program offer lessons for how jurisdictions can recruit college students efficiently: the program was run with relatively modest resources (one full-time staff member plus a materials budget) and the results point to the ways to recruit large numbers of students in a time-efficient way. The new dataset allows us to draw sociological and practical conclusions: it turns out that the principles that apply to the study of recruitment to political and social movements (and similar activities) are not necessarily a recipe for a recruitment program. In particular, the common assumption on the importance of personal contact should not be taken as dictating recruitment priorities. On the other hand, it is illuminating to learn how service as a poll worker is apparently perceived differently by bilingual students, and in particular Spanish-speaking students.

Since this paper is one of the first large-scale program analyses of college poll worker programs, there are many areas for further research.

Other college student programs, especially large-scale ones, could keep track of the same kind of data that was used in this study in order to verify the conclusions reached here. To make it more robust, the poll worker application could be revised to include some questions that are purely for research purposes. Researchers could employ a suite of online marketing tools to keep more precise track of which links and pages were bringing in applicants, and use A/B testing to isolate factors even further. Implementing those tracking strategies requires foresight but not much additional technical expertise.

Researchers also need to measure the impact of being a poll worker on a range of constituencies. The college students who participated in this program could be tracked further in order to create a longitudinal data set. Researchers could see whether the students serve as poll workers again (for example, in the 2016 elections), and which factors are influential in that outcome. They could track students’ records of civic participation, including voting and other political or civic action. A randomized study design could compare students’ civic attitudes and actions before and immediately after serving, and track them long-term. Creating a valid control group would require election authorities to not assign some qualified students, which would require persuasion.

The impact on election efficiency is another area ripe for additional research. Researchers could conduct a polling place observation study, paired with interviews with poll workers, in order to more directly test the hypothesis that college students can improve efficiency in handling technological tasks in the polling place. Studies like this have been done before, but have not attempted to specifically isolate the effect of college students (Spencer 2010).

Finally, this study suggests significant opportunities for sociological analyses. The regression results and survey responses suggest an interesting effect of being bilingual or being an immigrant (or both). A deeper investigation of this effect would get at central questions about social and democratic life in America:

• How does the conception of civic service differ between immigrants and native-born citizens (including both bilingual and monolingual people)? This question could be analyzed qualitatively through interview and ethnography and quantitatively through studying the factors that are influential in predicting civic service or participation for immigrant communities versus others.
• Could the Spanish-speaking effect hold for other large language minorities? This study should be repeated in cities with a different predominant language minority in order to see whether there is something unique about the Spanish-speaking community or whether the effect is generalizable.

Engaging college students in elections is not just a good learning experience: it is a way to improve democracy. For underrepresented populations, it is a way to participate in democratic community. For election jurisdictions, there are measurable improvements in efficiency from employing student workers. By continuing to run and study these programs, we can develop the next generation of citizens and make elections better.

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Race, D. (2015). Student Leaders in Elections: A Case Study in College Poll Worker Recruitment. Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. [http://www.votingrightsillinois.org/sle].

Schussman, A. & Soule, S. (2005). Process and Protest: Accounting for Individual Protest Participation. Social Forces, (82).

Show-Me New Poll Workers: Recruiting the Next Generation Among St. Louis Community College Students, St. Louis Community College, 2009.

Spencer, D. (2010). Long Lines at Polling Stations? Observations from an Election Day Field Study. Election Law Journal, (9).

The Central Ohio College Poll Worker Recruitment Program, Kids Voting of Central Ohio, 2010.

Unequal Opportunities in Civic Participation: Race Matters Collection (2006). Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Note

The program and report were made possible with the generous support of the McCormick Foundation. The author would like to thank Annabelle Harless, Ruth Greenwood, Audra Lewicki, Rose Torres, Theresa Howard, Dillan Seigler, the McCormick Foundation, the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, and the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. For their technical expertise and guidance, a special thanks to Anthony Fowler and also to Kay Dannenmaier, John Fahrenbach, and Reuben J. Thomas.

 About the author

Devin Race is a Policy Analyst at the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a non-profit organization that provides legal and advocacy services for low-income and minorities communities.  Devin is a graduate of Yale University and an experienced debate coach.

by Jennifer W. Purcell, Kennesaw State University, USA

Abstract

The current article presents an action research case study that explored efforts to increase institutional capacity for community engagement at a public two-year college.  There is a wealth of research supporting best practices within campus-community partnerships for community-engaged pedagogies; however, there remains a gap in the literature on how to implement these identified best practices, particularly within the community college sector.  This article presents insights on this process, including leadership and organizational development to support the community engagement, within community colleges.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to explore how community colleges increase their capacity for community engagement.  To meet this objective, individuals identified as service leaders within a public two-year college were recruited to participate in a series of interventions designed to improve current practices for community engagement within the college.  These professional development interventions were tailored to respond to areas of need confirmed during initial data collection involving the assessment of the college’s level of service-learning institutionalization.  For this study, service leaders were identified as both faculty and staff who were recognized by the college’s administration for their contribution to community engagement efforts, including service-learning and outreach programs.

Based on initial findings from preliminary data collection within the college and a review of the literature, the study’s research questions were defined as follows:

What are the characteristics of leadership for community engagement within the community college?

Who informs decision-making regarding community engagement with the community college?

How does the community partner voice inform decision-making among service leaders?

How does the informal service leader voice inform decision-making among senior leaders at the college?

Methodology

Action research (AR) is a method of inquiry that engages researchers in problem solving and responds to growth opportunities while contributing to the knowledge of a particular field (Merriam, 2009).  Merriam (2009) notes that action research pits real world people against real world challenges as the methodology identifies practical solutions for challenges in a specific context. AR involves a cyclical approach that engages the research in continuous cycles of planning, acting, and evaluation (Coghlan & Brannick, 2010; Stringer, 2007).  Although the cycles in which practitioners engage may vary slightly by preference and situational needs, the core of action research is the three-phase cycle. AR addresses the unique situational needs of a specific organization; however, its findings are intended to aid in the improvement or transformation of other organizations in similar contexts (Coghlan & Brannick, 2010).

Research Site and Participants

Southeastern Community College (SCC) served as the research site for this study.  SCC is a pseudonym for a public, two-year college that is comprised of multiple campuses located throughout a region of its home state.  As a community engagement scholar-practitioner embedded in the community college sector during a four year period preceding this study, I had the opportunity to connect with institutional leaders who support depended and expanded community engagement efforts.  Through these connections, I was positioned to facilitate this research with a college whose senior leaders were familiar with my career and scholarship.  These senior college leaders at SCC served formally as the stakeholders for the study.  A combination of opportunity, purposeful networking, and thoughtful, client system-centered negotiations allowed me the opportunity to conduct research with SCC.  In recent years, SCC had begun to increase its efforts to intentionally and systematically engage its multiple communities.  As such, the research stakeholders and I recognized the opportunity to learn from the college’s current efforts and document strategies for deepened and expanded impacts for both student learning and community impact.

The participants in the study are the members of a learning community formed as a professional development intervention during the three-year study and representatives from their respective community partnerships.  The six members of the learning community are faculty and staff at the college who were recruited to participate in a study of current campus-community partnerships connected to the college.  The college stakeholders who provided access for this research identified these individuals as prospective participants based on their ongoing work with community partners.  For the purpose of anonymity, participants were assigned pseudonyms.  Table 1 includes each member of the learning community and their leadership role related to community engagement at the college.  These participants were recruited because of their direct involvement with such partnerships at the college.  Community partners were also invited to participate in the study.  The three community partners were included for two reasons.  First, their participation in the study reflects best practices that emphasize partner involvement and voice in developing and assessing campus-community partnerships (Sandy & Holland, 2006).  Secondly, the literature indicates the value of a strong underlying relationship between the representatives of campus-community partnerships, and the partners’ participation in the study is an opportunity to strengthen those relationships (Bringle & Hatcher, 2002; Sandy & Holland, 2006).  Additionally, the three members of the college leadership team who served as stakeholders for the study also participated in interviews.

Table 1

Service Leader Classification and Leadership Role

Professional Development Interventions

Table 2 provides an overview of the professional development interventions designed collaboratively between the researchers and the study’s stakeholders.  Each intervention was developed with input from members of SCC’s senior leadership team and members of the service leader learning community.

Table 2

The Intervention Plan

Faculty and staff learning community.  The faculty and staff learning community was a central element on this action research case study.  The study stakeholders and I agreed to provide a space for collaborative learning among the service leaders identified for the study.  We utilized a case convening process through which the group focused on a single partnership, or case, and engaged in peer coaching to support the presenting members’ learning around the case.  Our intent was to provide a model for collaborative action inquiry through which participants would be empowered to further advance their respective community engagement initiatives.

I originally proposed that the community partner involved in the case be invited to participate to direct the group’s attention to the partners’ perspectives, including their needs and perceived opportunities associated with the partnerships.  However, participants were hesitant to engage their partners early in the study citing that they were uncomfortable with inviting community partners at that point, but would be open to engaging the partners once they were comfortable with the process and felt more organized.  Based on their feedback and hesitancy to engage their partners as this stage, the stakeholders and I decided to move forward with the college employee sessions only for this intervention.

The six participants presented written cases to the group with one participant sharing a verbal account of her experiences.  The cases were sent via email before our scheduled face-to-face convenings, and participants were asked to read the case and make comments before the convening.  During the convenings, participants shared a summary of their case before the group engaged in dialogue around the challenges presented in the case.  Then, a group discussion of the case continued for approximately forty-five minutes during which group members shared their comments, insights, and posed additional questions as necessary.

During the discussion of each case, group members would offer insights based on their experiences.  In several instances, group members shared suggestions and offered solutions that the case presenter had not considered.  The tone was conversational and there was rarely a silent moment.  It was not uncommon to hear group members share remarks that began with “in my experience” which indicated the perceived value of their personal experiences as service leaders.  That is, the convening process encouraged reflection on their individual leadership practices and associated experiences, and participants were confident in the contribution of their reflections to the group’s learning.  Our goal was to identify challenges that each group member had experienced so that an organization-level solution could be developed.  I routinely asked, “What support structures would need to be in place” so that you and other service leaders could avoid this challenge?  My intent was to help direct the group toward the bigger-picture, organizational needs that were evident in their cases.

Assessment of partnerships.  During the study, members of the faculty and staff learning community convened three community partner sessions during which attendees were asked to reflect on and share their experiences collaborating with the college, including its employees and students.  The qualitative data collected during these sessions provided a formative assessment of existing partnerships.  This data was then integrated into the case convenings as the participants began to develop a more information and comprehensive assessment of the community partnerships each supported.  

Professional development event.  Upon completion of the case convenings, members of the faculty and staff learning community organized a college-wide professional development event on community-engaged pedagogies and practices.  The events including presentations on data collected through the learning community, multiple breakout sessions lead by members of the learning community, and a keynote speaker from a national community engagement organization.  Attendees included faculty and staff, deans, and community members.

Data Analysis and Findings

Data collection analysis began early in the study and informed subsequent actions and the direction of the study as is typical of action research (Stringer, 2007).  Data were collected via interviews with service leaders, college leaders, and community partners.  Field notes, researcher memos, and document review were also sources of data.  The research design included collecting multiple data sets in order to use triangulation to support reliable data analysis (Coghlan & Brannick, 2010).  Table 3 presents the varied sources and quantity of data collected.

Table 3

Data Sources and Collection Time Period

Ruona’s (2005) method for qualitative data analysis was implemented in this study.   Ruona’s method for qualitative data analysis includes four steps:  Step 1 – Data Preparation; Step 2 – Data Familiarization; Stept 3 – Data Coding; and Step 4 – Making Meaning From Data.  I included a fifth step that included data triangulation in order to cross reference data across multiple data points and validate the findings (Stringer, 2007).  Table 4 presents an overview of the findings.

Table 4

Research Findings

These findings from the data inform four conclusions drawn from the study.  The conclusions address leadership, communication, and authenticity as each topic relates to community engagement.  The following section will introduce each conclusion and situate what was learned through this research within the existing literature on the topic that originally guided the development of the study.

Conclusions

Conclusion 1:  Distributed leadership to advance community engagement is derived from college employees’ and community partners’ boundary spanning behaviors.

Leadership for community engagement reflects the complex network of individuals within the college and the community.  Traditional leadership theories that define leadership as an individual’s set of knowledge and authority are insufficient for understanding the breadth of individuals involved in leadership for community engagement.  Burke (2010) suggests,

“Traditional leadership theory overwhelmingly emphasizes the power and influence of a single individual to direct followers in organizational action. In order to create self-directed learners, leadership theory shifted with the aims of empowering all individuals within an organization. For both educational and organizational theory, the shift occurs due to the fact that no one individual can demonstrate leadership in all contexts” (2010, p. 52).

Burke’s argument against traditional leadership theory is exemplified by the case of community engagement leadership at SCC.

In this study, data suggests leadership for community engagement is not encapsulated in a single individual or office.  Instead, leadership is distributed throughout the organization and within the community through community partners.  Distributed leadership theory recognizes that leadership within educational organizations extends beyond the influence of a single individual (Spillane, 2005).  The theory suggests leadership is comprised of the sum of multiple individuals within an organization.  Moreover, distributed leadership theory emphasizes the influence of leadership practices rather than leadership positions within organizations and individual leadership knowledge.  Spillane (2005) suggests leadership practice is a product of interaction of leaders, followers, and the context rather than a result from a leader’s knowledge and skills.  The distributed perspective defines leadership as the interactions between people and their situation.

This study also revealed distinct behaviors that were common among service leaders.  The particular set of behaviors documented in interviews and researcher observations are boundary-spanning behaviors.  Boundary-spanning characteristics include enhanced communication skills, connections to multiple contexts internal and external to one’s organizations, and servings as an information gatekeeper between two contexts (Tushman & Scanlan, 1981).  Research indicates that boundary-spanning behaviors are prevalent among community engagement leaders in higher education.  Sandmann and Weerts (2008) contend that higher education institutions reshape their boundaries to adopt and promote engagement agendas.  Boundary spanners within organizations function as natural extensions of institutional boundaries that may limit community engagement.  In subsequent research, Weerts and Sandmann (2010) affirmed that boundary spanners supported community engagement initiatives as four overlapping roles:  technical expert; internal engagement advocate; engagement champion, and community-based problem solver.

In this study, we found representation of each of the four roles among service leaders in the college.  The distributed nature of the college’s leadership for engagement unified by the collaborative action inquiry intervention leveraged the individual boundary spanning roles held by each service leader.  Community partners exhibited boundary-spanning characteristics as well.  For example, one community partner included in the study is also a student at SCC.  The other two leaders had ties to the college prior to the creation of their respective campus-community partnership.  Distributed leadership for community engagement included community partners.  Therefore, the distributed leadership model leveraged the boundary spanning characteristics of the community partners as well as the service leaders employed by the college.

Conclusion 2:  Within community colleges, the creation and extension of communication channels among multiple stakeholder groups for community engagement parallels the advancement of community engagement.

Just as leadership abilities are constructed through intentional development, so are communication channels constructed intentionally to inform decision-making.  Spillane (2005) argues that the situation “constitutes leadership practice” suggesting that the situation defines leadership practice in the interaction with leaders and followers” (p. 145).  Situational elements are also critical in enhancing communication.  The collaborative action inquiry intervention in this study created a situation, or context, in which individual leaders formed a community of practice.  Founded in social constructivist learning theory, Wenger (1998) suggests that groups of people who meet regularly on a specific, shared interest form a community of practice.  This community of practice has the potential to increase collective learning.

This study illustrated how a community of practice also supports enhanced communication among participants.  Spillane (2005) posits, “Individuals play off one another, creating a reciprocal interdependency between their actions” (p. 146).  In the community of practice formed during this study, actions produced increased communication between service leaders and the college administration.  Researcher observations and participant interviews provided evidence of movement toward enhanced collaborative decision-making to inform community engagement.  As a result of strengthened communication among multiple stakeholder groups including service leaders, college administrators, and community partners, the college advanced its community engagement agenda.  Therefore, results of the study suggest that the level communication across multiple stakeholder groups is associated with the extent to which the college’s engagement agenda is advanced.  Hence, increased, directed communication among stakeholder groups supports the institutionalization of engagement.

Conclusion 3:  Authentic engagement exists in various degrees throughout distinct stages of institutionalization reflecting the unique contexts and stakeholder interests involved.

Authentic engagement between institutions of higher education and community partners is foremost characterized by reciprocity and mutuality (Holland, 2001).  Research provides practitioners with numerous sets of best practices which are each built on the fundamental principles of reciprocity and the concept of creating mutually beneficial partnerships in which both the college and community partner’s interests and needs are reflected in the activities and outcomes of the partnership.  One prominent recommendation across recommended best practices is early and ongoing inclusion of the community partner voice.

Authentic community engagement reflects activities done in concert with community partners.  The emphasis of action is “with,” meaning in conjunction with versus alternative approaches of less authentic community engagement activities that are guided by the premise of providing a service or charity “to” or “for” community-based partners or even merely “in” a community (Moely, et. al, 2008; Sandy & Holland, 2006).  The latter creates a context in which power dynamics, particularly the authority of the college, undercut the objective of creating mutuality in the campus-community partnership.  Research suggests that, in order to establish reciprocity and mutuality as the foundation of community engagement, colleges must invite and incorporate community partner input beginning in the initial stages of planning and development (Bringle & Hatcher, 2002).

At SCC, service leaders were hesitant to include community partners in the initial planning phase of the study.  Once the study was underway, the researcher’s recommendation to include community partners in the learning community was considered but ultimately rejected.  Service leaders presented genuine concerns to rationalize their preferences.  Such reasoning included the notion that community partners, with all that they are responsible for in their own organizations, do not have time to meet with the group, and their concern that the group and college administration’s plans for future growth in community engagement initiatives lacked clarity.  In fairness to the service leaders, they were considering the needs of their community partner in making these decisions.  However, these needs were assumed by the service leaders without an actual offer to include the community partner and consider their responses.

As evidenced by community partner interview responses, this study supports the many directions colleges take in developing community engagement programs.  To suggest a right and wrong way of engaging community partners and institutionalizing community engagement is narrow and shortsighted.  Yet, these important decisions must include careful consideration of community partner needs.  True, best practices indicate early and ongoing collaboration with community partners is ideal; however, unique contextual factors and a myriad of variables that cannot be controlled determine actual practice.  The future success of SCC’s community engagement program will further validate their decision to exclude the community partner voice in the development and planning for community engagement.  At the conclusion of this study, evidence in the form of community partner and service leader responses supported the alternative approach of purposefully delayed community partner collaboration following the early creation and implementation of internal organizational structures to support community engagement.

Learning Model for Distributed Leadership for Community Engagement

In defining the theoretical connection between leadership behaviors and structures found that Spillane (2005) proposed,

“Structures, routines, and tools are the means through which people act. Yet, these same structures, routines, and tools are created and remade through leadership practice” (p. 147).

Distributed leadership theory holds that leadership behavior emerges through existing structures, or the lack thereof.  Similarly, structures are shaped through leadership behavior.

Figure 1 illustrates the introduction of a learning intervention to support the advancement of community engagement when distributed leadership in apparent within the college.  This learning model for distributed leadership demonstrates the connectivity of learning and change in relation to cycles of developing leadership behaviors and structures that emerge through collaborative action inquiry.  The model integrates Coghlan’s (2006) model of first, second, and third-person learning.  Multiple cycles of inquiry and action are represented in the model in addition to the progression of learning for the first, second, and third-person.  Furthermore, the model illustrates the influence of individual, group, and organizational on organizational change.  The model also illustrates the influence of organizational change on learning within an organization.  Through iterative cycles of action and inquiry, leadership behaviors are honed, equipping service leaders with the knowledge and skills to support campus community partnerships and advance a college’s community engagement agenda.

Figure 1

Learning Model for Distributed Leadership of Community Engagement

In the absence of organizational structures for community engagement leadership, leadership behavior among service leaders will initially inform the development of necessary organizational structures that support the sustained expansion of community engagement.  In this study, distributed leadership is evidenced by the emergence of service leaders throughout the organization before formal structures were in place to support community engagement.  In situations where organizational structures are in place prior to the emergence of service leaders, such structures potentially influence the behaviors of service leaders as they emerge.  For example, the creation of the faculty and staff learning community, which is now a formal advisory committee and a community engagement administrative unit, will now influence the behaviors of the service leaders.  The cycles of influence included in Figure 1 illustrate Spillane’s argument that organizational structures are created and remade through leadership behavior.  Spillane (2005) posits structures, routines, and tools are the means through which people act.  Yet, the same structures, routines, and tools are created and remade through leadership practice.  In discussing distributed leadership theory, Spillane (2005) argues, “There is a two-way relationship between situation and practice. Aspects of the situation can either enable or constrain practice, while practice can transform the situation” (p. 149).

This concept that “practice creates and recreates” is reflected in the multiple cycles included in the model (Spillane, 2005, p. 148).  Hence, cycles of influence could be generative or degenerative depending on the context.  This leads to the consideration of how collaborative action inquiry can be aligned mindfully to the cycles of influence to yield a positive, generative outcome.

Implications

The study presented multiple implications for community engagement practice.  The value of communication across the multiple stakeholder groups involved in community engagement emerged as a paramount finding early in this study and remained at the forefront throughout its duration.  The importance of leadership in change initiatives related to community engagement was also evident.  Specifically, the findings suggest that existing leadership distributed throughout an organization can be leveraged through alignment.  The findings also suggest that both faculty and staff members can be valuable service leaders who may benefit from professional development.  Finally, the findings demonstrate the impact of organizational learning to support the institutionalization of engagement.

Enhanced Communication for Community Engagement

The benefits of communication channels across multiple stakeholder groups were demonstrated throughout this study.  The study highlighted opportunities for enhanced institutional practices and possible strategies for continued communication.  For example, the study evidenced the positive impact of communication among service leaders, between service leaders and college leaders, and among community partners and service leaders.  This simple, though overlooked strategy for organizational learning and change is critical to the institutionalization of engagement, particularly in decentralized higher education institutions.  Through the faculty and staff learning community, existing communication channels were strengthened and new communication channels were created.  These enhanced communication channels allowed participants to coalesce as a community of practice, adopt a shared language for community engagement at SCC, and explore strategies to extend community engagement efforts.

Leadership Alignment for Change

The study demonstrated the impact of aligning leaders dispersed throughout an organization.  College administrators and community engagement leaders may find that the talent needed to institutionalize community engagement within their organization already exists.  Aligning these service leaders’ efforts and defining common goals increases their collective ability to effect change for engagement.  This study, therefore, suggests that practitioners should provide space for collaboration and opportunities for group learning.  These experiences will strengthen alignment among service leaders and provide a base of support for the college’s community engagement agenda.

Alignment for change may be achieved in multiple ways that leverage an institution’s existing structure and meets the needs of its particular challenges and growth opportunities.  For example, a limited enrollment, single campus institution may be served effectively by a community engagement advisory committee; whereas, a more structurally complex institution with a greater number of employees and students may require a centralized unit with dedicated staff.  The findings from this study emphasize the necessity of starting at the point of greatest opportunity within a particular institution.  There are a variety of structures to support and advance community engagement.  Leaders are wise to leverage existing expertise and effective practices within their college while advocating for expanded support.  The ideal design of a college’s expansion is informed by data from existing community partnerships, prospective community partners, student learning needs, and the institutional culture.

Professional Development Practices

Much of the literature on hiring, professional development, and promotion practices that support community engagement has focused on faculty members (O’Meara et. al, 2011).  Specifically, promotion and tenure policies that support faculty community engagement have been of interest among researchers.  This is due to the emphasis of academic service learning in community engagement within higher education.  However, this study highlighted the leadership role of college staff, including those who do not work for a community engagement office, in advancing the college’s community engagement agenda.

This study demonstrates that both faculty and staff members are important contributors to community engagement.  Staff members are largely overlooked in existing literature of the professional support structures required for the institutionalization of engagement.  Hence, leader-practitioners should make a concerted effort to include staff members in professional development opportunities and provide a basis for future research.

Leveraging Organizational Learning

The learning interventions included in this study had minimal hard costs.  In kind expenses included meeting space, technology, and limited office supplies.  Most sessions involving college employees occurred during the lunch hour and therefore had minimal interference with the participants’ work productivity.  Organizational learning studies such as these are valuable, cost effective means of supporting community engagement within higher education.  The growth of SSC’s community engagement program during the course of the study indicates the influence such a study has on the institutionalization of service learning with limited fiscal investment.  Therefore, colleges interested in advancing their community engagement agendas should consider leveraging existing professional development opportunities available to service leaders and consider additional learning interventions to support community engagement initiatives.

Future Research

This study provided insight for research on the institutionalization of engagement with the community college sector.  It relied on knowledge of advancing community engagement in four-year institutions and considered the characteristics of community colleges as civic organizations.  As a new avenue of research, additional study is needed to further increase our understanding of institutionalized engagement in community colleges.  Recommendations for future research include replication of this case study as well as modifications to advance the knowledge base on interventions to increase community engagement.

Within the context of community engagement, it is important to understand how collaborative action inquiry supports the cycles of influence between leadership behaviors and organization structures, because the scope and depth of both influence the sustainability of community engagement programs, their impact on student success, and objectives related to campus-community partnerships.  For example, Sandmann and Liang (2012) found that distributed leadership practices were common among institutions awarded the community engaged classification by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in the 2008 and 2010 cycles.  It is, therefore, helpful to consider the extent to which distributed leadership is evident within a college that seek the community-engaged classification.

 Summary

This study illustrated how professional development supports organizational learning for community engagement.  According to one service leader, the action research study advanced the college’s engagement agenda.  She said,

“I think it put structure around [community engagement efforts].  I think that we have an ear that we didn’t have before.  I think we still have some missing pieces, but that’s with anything. In time, it will get better and better but I think we’ve made strides.  I think we’ve uncovered things that we didn’t think … never even thought of, but that’s the whole idea.  That’s not a failure.  That’s the idea of working together.  Working together – what a concept. (laughs) Teamwork, the variance in the group and what a great dynamic. I see it as just all around as positive and I’m impressed. We have a great group of people here. Now we just need to get that out. All we need is to get that out.”

Findings indicate this type of inquiry leveraged existing distributed leaders with boundary spanning characteristics who were previously dispersed throughout organization and leading engagement without institutional structures to support their work.  Though a modification of best practices for authentic engagement, early planning and decision-making without community partner collaboration is one of many alternative means of inclusive practices that prioritizes the service leader’s and college’s needs.  One significant contribution of community engagement related professional development for community colleges is the enhanced communication it creates throughout the organization and across multiple stakeholder groups in the community.  This study set change into motion and facilitated the institutionalization process while providing an insider’s perspective of the institutionalization of engagement within a multi-campus community college.  Future research is warranted and will further inform our understanding of challenges and supports of the advancement of community engagement within the community college sector.

References

Bringle, R. G. and Hatcher, J. A. (2002).  Campus-community partnerships: The terms of engagement. Journal of Social Issues, 58(3), 503-516.

Burke, W. W. (2008). Organizational change:  Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Clayton, P. H.; Bringle, R. G.; Senor, B.; Huq, J.; & Morrison, M. (2010). Differentiating and assessing relationships in service-learning and civic engagement: Exploitative, transaction, or transformational. Michigan Journal of Community Serivce Learning, Spring 2010, 5-22.

Coghlan, D. & Brannick, T. (2010). Doing action research in your own organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Furco, A. (2001). Advancing service-learning at research universities. New Directions for Higher Education, 114, 67-78.

Holland, B. A. (2001). A comprehensive model for assessing service-learning and community university partnerships. New Directions for Higher Education, 2001: 51-60.

Holland, B. A. (2009). Will it last? Evidence of institutionalization at Carnegie classified community engagement institutions. New Directions for Higher Education, 2009: 85-98.

Jeandron, C. & Robonson, G. (2010). Creating a climate for service learing success. American Association of Community Colleges.

Kezar, A. (2012). Bottom-up/top-down leadership: Contradiction or hidden phenomenon. The Journal of Higher Education, 83(5), 725-258.

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O’Meara, K. A., Sandmann, L. R., Saltmarsh, J., & Giles, D. E., Jr. (2011). Studying the professional lines and work of faculty involved in community engagement. Innovations in Higher Education, 36, 83-96.

Sandmann, L. R. & Weerts, D. J. (2008). Reshaping institutional boundaries to accommodate an engagement agenda. Innovative Higher Education 33, 181-196.

Sandy, M, and Holland, B. A. (2006). Different worlds and common ground: Community partner perspectives on campus-community partnerships. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, Fall 2006, 30-43.

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About the author:

Jennifer W. Purcell

Jennifer W. Purcell, Ed.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Leadership and Integrative Studies at Kennesaw State University.  Dr. Purcell teaches undergraduate courses on leadership and organizational theory through community-engaged pedagogies.  Her research explores leadership and organizational development to support cross-sector partnerships, in particular those between colleges and universities and their communities.

Franca Ferrari-Bridgers, Queensborough Community College, CUNY, USA

 Abstract

In this article, I report the results of a service-learning (SL) project between northeastern community college students and detained students at a northeastern federal prison. The project fosters a transfer of public speaking and interpersonal communication knowledge from the classrooms to the prison educational center to society at large. This educational collaboration sets an example of how engaged teaching between students, faculty and incarcerated students can bring individual and social changes across different sectors of the population. Individual and social changes were measured by matching students’ reflections and incarcerated instructors’ group discussions with Eyler and Giles’s (1999) expected service-learning outcomes. The analysis of the reflections proves how, even in a short time span such as a semester, service-learning can be a tool for civic engagement and social change.

Introduction

“I think service-learning has motivated me because I am very excited that I can help people who really need our help and it’s amazing how with a little effort and dedication we can be a ray of light to someone who needs to have at least a little hope in difficult times” (S1).

The words of Student #1 capture, in their simplicity, the essence of service-learning (henceforth SL) pedagogical and civic outcomes: motivation to learn, effort and dedication to serve the community and, most importantly, an understanding that students can become agents of change in their community. The idea that through the experience of SL students can think about themselves as “a ray of light to someone who needs to have at least a little hope in difficult times” exemplifies, in lay words, Dewey’s holistic and Kolb’s transformation approaches on learning. Service-learning, in fact, finds its origin in Dewey’s revolutionary philosophy of continuity, “based on a belief that people, as holistic beings, learn best by engaging mind, body, spirit, experience, and knowledge” (Kezar & Rhoads 2001, p. 162); and it is further developed in Kolb (1984)’s transformational learning, i.e., “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (Kolb, Boyatzis, & Mainemelis, 2000, p.41).

According to Kolb’s learning cycle, students engaged in SL first, have the concrete experience of providing a service to a third party community partner, and then they reflect upon the experience. Intellectually reflecting upon experiential observations enables students to connect the academic content of their course to the service they provide to the community. Such a connection represents a transformational learning experience that affects students’ intellectual and civic life. Civically, as Jacoby (1996, p.5) states, SL fosters student learning and students’ personal development, because it allows students to experience and promote social justice advocacy. During SL students have the possibility to become social actors, who, according to Bell (2000, p.21), “have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others, their society, and the broader world in which we live”. In their new role as advocates, students strive to higher quality learning because they are motivated by being personally accountable for the quality of their course deliverable, i.e., their service to a third party in need.

In the literature, the successful impact of transformational learning and SL on student learning has been well documented, especially among community college students, the target population of this study. In the last twenty years, in fact, pedagogical research has suggested that using High Impact Practices have increased student engagement and success, bringing pedagogical innovation and better quality teaching to community college students (Kuh 2008). McNair and Albertine (2012, p.32) both agree on the value of HIP in community colleges, and assert that “Our society can no longer afford to reserve ‘islands of innovation’ for a select group of students while others, often students traditionally underserved, receive an education more suited to the industrial age”. Though HIP “may not constitute a broadly applicable “silver bullet” for effective undergraduate education” (Seifert et al., 2014, p.557), across all undergraduate student populations, it has been demonstrated that HIPs enhance positive attitudes towards literacy, and cognitive and meta-cognitive critical thinking skills in underserved students (Cruce et al., 2006; Kuh et al., 2008; Loes, Pascarella & Umbach, 2012). Many studies (see Roney et al., 2013, Rosario et al., 2013, among many others) reported positive trends as far as retention, persistence, graduation rate and academic progress of community college students enrolled in HIP courses. The results of several studies conducted by the American Association of Colleges and Universities on community college students argued for the connection between Service-learning participation and increased learning by showing that Service-learning students scored statistically higher in five out of six measured learning outcomes: critical thinking, communication, career and teamwork, civic responsibility, and academic development and educational success.

In this paper, I look at the individual and social impact a SL project between a northeastern community college and a northeastern federal prison had on college students and incarcerated men. The project fostered a transfer of public speaking and interpersonal communication knowledge from the students’ classrooms to the prison educational center to society at large. I argue that this educational collaboration sets an example of how engaged teaching between students, faculty and incarcerated men can bring individual and social changes across different sectors of the population. In different capacities, both students and incarcerated men acted as agents of individual and social change while being personally transformed through SL by becoming self-aware of their individual transformation at academic and civic levels. Just by being at one of the two ends of a SL project, students changed their individual prejudices and social attitudes towards incarcerated people; while detainees reported to have improved their personal relationships in and out the correctional facility as a consequence of communication style changes.

The paper is organized as such. Firstly, I provide a description of the SL project in terms of its population, structural design and methodology used to collect the data. Then I present and analyze the students’ data. Finally, I discuss how the data supports the thesis that SL can bring individual and social changes, not only among the students, but also across different sectors of the population.

Project Design

During the course of three semesters (Spring 2013, Fall 2013 and Spring 2014), three different sections of Public Speaking flipped their roles from students to teachers: researching, planning, designing and creating a series of micro-lectures on how to improve public speaking and interpersonal communication skills for incarcerated men while reentering society. More precisely, students created college course material in the following subjects: (1) public speaking; (2) listening skills; (3) interpersonal communication and; (4) audience analysis.

Community college faculty, on the other hand played a liaison role between students and detained men by visiting the correctional facility and teaching the material students prepared. In turn, by using the students’ teaching material, detained men who volunteered as instructors at the Prison educational center, organized communication workshops for other incarcerated men currently enrolled in reentry programs. These workshops were designed to help detained students improve verbal and non-verbal communication skills when dealing with real life situations, such as communicating to family members, staff, potential employers, judges, guards and police officers.

One cornerstone of this project’s design was to ensure that no “intellectual vacuum” existed between our college students and our community partners. I wanted to avoid the surge of any “clear divide between the knowers (the scientists, experts, and intellectuals) and the known (the community members seen as an object of study, not a source of knowledge)” (Peterson, 2009, p.548). Therefore, community college students and faculty made sure that the transfer of knowledge, the students’ deliverables, were tailored to the needs of the SL partners. During visits to correctional facility, the college faculty and the incarcerated instructors spent time critiquing the students’ work to improve quality and effectiveness. In this way, the detained instructors had the opportunity to provide meaningful feedback to the students’ work. Students valued such feedback because it helped them to reflect back on the quality of their work.

Pedagogically, this SL project was built on several key elements of High Impact Practices described in Kuh (2008), Brownell and Swaner (2010) and Kuh and O’Donnell (2011). In particular, it satisfied the following four key elements described in Kuh and O’Donnell (2011, p.10).

• “Significant investment of time and effort by students over an extended period of time;”
• “Experiences with diversity, wherein students are exposed to and must contend with people and circumstances that differ from those with which students are familiar;”
• “Opportunities to discover relevance of learning through real-world-applications;” and
• “Public demonstration of competence.”

The community college students worked intensively in groups for over a month at the creation of the teaching material for the instructors at the correctional facility. They researched, planned, created and recorded a series of three-five minute voiced-enhanced Power Point lessons. Students spent time brainstorming how to choose the right vocabulary for their target audience, as well as the right image/visual to accompany the text. They were compelled to practice their speech delivery skills (fluency, volume, rate) before recording each slide, in order to arrive at the creation of an impeccable product.

Students’ teaching material was presented by the students themselves to the entire college community during various students’ exhibitions. This public speaking experience gave the opportunity to put to practice all of their public speaking skills, ensuring that the overall community college audience understood the educational and civic value of their project. In addition, the fact that students needed to tailor the deliverable to a specific underserved sector of the population made students aware of the real world use of their academic work. Detained instructors advised college students to create lessons for an audience whose level of education was comparable to that of an 8^th grade student. College students had to carefully choose the right vocabulary for their Power Point presentations, trying to find a balance between simplifying the textbook language and introducing key speech terminology.

Finally, before participating in this SL project, the students had never interacted with or volunteered services to incarcerated men, nor had the instructors at the northeastern facility ever had the opportunity to collaborate with college students.

Subjects

The two populations involved in this project were the northeastern community college students and the northeastern federally detained instructors.

According to the Queensborough Community College 2013-2014 Fact book, there were 3396 college students enrolled as firstime freshman and 899 as advanced transfer students. Our community college is one of the most diverse campuses nationwide, with 30% Hispanic, 22% Asian, 22% Black and 18% White students. Our students come from 143 countries, speak 84 different languages with 26% of the student population born outside of the U.S.A. Over 44% of freshmen in 2013 spoke a language other than English at home. As far as remediation, 68% of the freshmen were mandated to take remedial math, 22% remedial reading and writing. Students’ ages vary between 18 to 24 years old. Most of our students come from local high schools in Queens and, with few exceptional high school club experiences or individual charity donations, most of our students have never volunteered or been part of a non-profit association providing services to people in need.

The group of men at the northeastern facility consisted of 10 adults between the ages of 28 to 60 years, with longterm sentences, whose roles inside the facility were that of instructors and mentors of younger incarcerated men. Specifically, as instructors, the men were running a speech/debate club inside the correctional facility. In order to improve the academic quality of their course, they needed a validated college speech curriculum, a series of lesson plans, updated textbooks and Power Point lessons of fundamental speech communication topics. The instructors felt that a collaboration with community college students and faculty would have validated their speech club academically and added credibility to their program and instructors. Though the majority of instructors were good public speakers, they did not have an academic background to back up their experiencebased knowledge.

Expected service-learning outcomes and students’ reflections

Eyler and Giles’s survey of over 1500 students across the country, as described in their 1999 book “Where’s the Learning in Service-Learning?” identifies a series of possible service-learning outcomes that students are expected to achieve by the end of the service-learning project. I took into account six SL outcomes as indicators of individual and social changes among our students and, indirectly, also among SL partners. Because all social change is usually preceded or accompanied by individual change, it is impossible to draw a clear line between these two types of change within the students’ narratives. Therefore, in this analysis, I labelled the changes in students’ selfawareness of his/her knowledge, competence, personal growth and academic performance as “individual.” I labelled the changes that help SL participants to transform their perspective/attitude towards an issue or group of people as “individual and social.”

Table 1: Service-Learning Outcomes and Level of Change

Moreover, in support of Hatcher, Bringle, and Muthiah’s statement “through reflection, the community service can be studied and interpreted, much like a text is read and studied for deeper understanding” (2004, p. 39), I used students’ reflections to measure individual and social changes in the students themselves. As part of the Teagle Foundation project Student Learning for Civic Capacity: Stimulating Moral, Ethical, and Civic Engagement for Learning that Lasts, all community college instructors were asked to use the same set of reflection prompts. All the reflection prompts were derived from the AAC&U Essential Learning Outcomes and then they were reviewed and revised for accuracy by five experts of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment. I did not distribute reflection prompts to the incarcerated men, but during the visits at the correctional institute, the faculty engaged the men in discussions about the SL project and its educational and individual benefits in the incarcerated men’s everyday lives inside the institution. These group discussions were organized in accordance with several tenets of the Participatory Action Research (Kemmis & McTaggart 1988) which are defined as “a collective, self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices” (p.5). In particular, McTaggart’s PAR tenet #4 was at the core of our service-learning project:

Participatory action research establishes self-critical communities of people participating and collaborating in the research processes of planning, acting, observing and reflecting. It aims to build communities of people committed to enlightening themselves about the relationship between circumstance, action, and consequence and to emancipating themselves from the institutional and personal constraints which limit their power to live by their legitimate, freely chosen social values (McTaggart, 1997).

In our specific case, tenet #4 was put in action during each visit at the correctional facility. The college faculty and the facility instructors reflected on the students’ material and devised ways to tailor this material for the design of the public speaking workshops for young incarcerated students. The educational goal behind the public speaking workshops was to help young incarcerated men involved in the reentry program to improve their interpersonal communication skills while interacting with their peers, staff and family members. Moreover, the facility instructors participating in our SL were asked to plan and execute a persuasive speech following the students’ teaching material. During this assignment, incarcerated instructors had the opportunity to reflect, plan and put into action what they learned while creating the speech. At the end of this series of handson workshops, the college instructor led a discussion to find out what individual and social changes internees experienced as the result of SL.

Data analysis

In this section I will look at how the students’ reflection and the incarcerated instructors’ group discussions meet the aforementioned expected service-learning outcomes. I assume that the service-learning outcomes are indicators of academic, individual and social change.

SL Outcome #1: High academic engagement and motivation to the course/learning

At academic and pedagogical level, on average, SL students received higher marks for their performance in their final oral exam than non-SL students in the same semester. Though this trend has not been systematically validated, I believe that SL students had more opportunity to practice their public speaking skills in a variety of settings, e.g., college fairs and group discussions, and therefore felt more confident during their final oral exam. Moreover, looking at the students’ reflections of S1 and S2 below, reversing their role from students to teachers, and being socially engaged by helping others through their academic work motived students to be more committed to their learning.

S1: “I think this idea has motivated me to study more.”

S2 “I feel really committed to this project and to learn more.”

I believe that the motivation and commitment to the course because of SL might be two of the factors that have pushed students to improve for their final oral exam.

As far as the correctional facility partners, during a series of group discussions about the effectiveness of the provided service, many of the SL participants stated they had learned new communication skills and improved their public speaking delivery skills. While discussing the SL project, the majority of participants said to have learned the following communication skills: being able to stay on topic while speaking; improving how to get points across while communicating with others; being more credible while speaking with others in a group; improving listening skills and learning how to write an informative and persuasive speech.

Individual change SL outcomes 2 & 3

The following table represents a sample of students’ reflections and incarcerated instructors’ opinions pertaining to individual changes through SL. Students’ changes range from self-awareness of personal development and interpersonal competence during group activities that promote equity in the community (S4, S7, S9) to self-knowledge and self-competence at the potential to feel empathy for the community around us (S2, S4). On the other hand, incarcerated instructors’ changes reflected their self-competence as public speakers and self-awareness of the positive effects of new interpersonal communication skills while communicating with family members, staff and other incarcerated men.

Table 2: SL Outcomes 2 & 3

Individual and Social changes SL outcomes 4, 5, 6

The following three tables contain students’ reflections on their individual and social changes experienced through SL. As stated above, these changes took place first in the students’ perception of an issue or group of people and, then reverberating their effects at social level. For instance, SL outcome 4 represents the individual students’ change of attitudes/stereotypes or misconceptions towards incarcerated people. As shown in Table 3, all the students directly stated that SL has changed their perception of incarcerated people. SL allowed them to understand that many incarcerated men worked hard to improve their life in an attempt to pay for the committed crime. As far as the incarcerated partners discussing the importance of choosing audience appropriate topics and language, led many to reflect on ways to break racial and language barriers inside the facility and on how to integrate larger sectors of the prison population into the public speaking workshops.

Table 3: SL Outcome 4

The individual change of perception towards incarcerated men is also reflected in SL outcomes # 5. In Table 4 students wrote about the civic effects of their changed perspectives. The cathartic experience of changing perceptions towards one of the most forgotten and exorcised sectors of the population, empowered students to become agents of change for the entire community (S1, S4). Students actually were able to see that the community around them is in need of help (S6, S11).

As far as the incarcerated men, the individual changes experienced through SL have motivated them to teach what they have learned from the SL project to other men in the facility.

Table 4: Civic Effects

Finally, SL outcome 6 shows how students have gained a broader and more articulated access to education and how they can be an agent of change in the lives of others (S2). Through education incarcerated men can be integrated back into society (S7) and through learning communication skills, they can improve the way they communicate with others in and out the correctional facility (S2, S11).

Table 5: Access to Education

Discussion

One of the central questions Meers (2014, p.45) posed in his article is whether “participation in service-learning supports increased student civic engagement in the long term.” The results of Myers-Lipton’s (1996) series of quasi-experimental studies provide an affirmative answer to the above question by showing a modest increase in civic engagement and civic responsibility with a reduction in prejudice and what the authors defined as “modern racism”. Similar results are confirmed by other longitudinal studies, such as Kiely (2004, 2005) and Moely & Ilustre (2013).

Given the cross-sectional nature of our project, it cannot be verified whether students actually engaged in long-term civic services once they completed our course. However, because the reflections represent students’ responses over the course of a few semesters, the content similarity of the elicited answers can be considered as a measurement of students’ individual and social changes. If one takes students’ words as predictors of their future behaviors, the analysis of the students’ reflections provided in the previous section can be considered as evidence that our SL project helped students to increase their sense of civic engagement and civic responsibility. The students’ reflections clearly show that being part of SL has helped students to change their opinion of inmates and their lives in prison, reducing common prejudices and stereotypes about detained people.

Looking first at the individual changes, outcome #2 refers to students’ individual personal development through participation in service-learning. Students’ reflections reveal students’ understanding of the civic application of the course content. The reflections suggest that breaking the barrier of studying alone by actively participating in group activities not only impacted the students by showing them “different perspectives” but it also helped students to understand that through learning they can “engage in community services” and “participate in different activities for the development of the community.” In this context, SL acts as a motivator for students to become active key players in their communities.

As far as outcome #4, students’ responses indicate that students changed their views about inmates and their lives in prison. This individual change can be interpreted as a social change as well. As a result of SL students now have a new understanding of inmates’ need for education and how education can help incarcerated men to change their lives. As S2 says “My perception of inmates did change by doing this project […] They might have repented of what they have done, and in some maybe not, but having them learn and doing something productive with their lives is a way of starting over [sic].”

All the students’ reflections support the claim that being part of service-learning can help to reduce stereotypes and increase one’s understanding towards marginalized groups. Reflection after reflection reiterates the fact that the experience of service-learning changed the students’ perceptions towards inmates [S2, S3,S6] but also helped students realize that they should not judge people without understanding their conditions [S5]. Moreover, as a result of helping others and understanding their circumstances, students became “more empathic” towards people around them [S8]. Most importantly, students had the opportunity to glimpse into the inmates’ lives, understanding that inmates try “to better their lives” as a redemptive process “for the crimes they committed” [S11].

A step further in the development of a commitment between the students and their civic engagement is visible in the reflections related to outcome #5. After having finally experienced that their academic learning can be concretized in a deliverable for a third party in need, “Now that I know that we can help people in this way” [S1], students reflected on their renewed sense of “commitment to civic and moral responsibility for equity” [S4]. For instance, realizing that “the community is in need of resources” [S11] compelled students “to help out more in the community” [S6].

Personal empowerment, the ability to produce a deliverable through a learning experience, fuels students to become more committed to their communities. The students’ reflections serve as a tool to measure how Service-learning changes students’ perspectives regarding their individual roles in society. The individual reward of being part of SL is evident in the students’ awareness that they can “make a difference in the lives of others.”

Finally, students’ social change can be captured in their understanding of the big picture of the educational condition of detained individuals and what our civic society can do to reduce unequal access to information, as depicted in outcome #6. Students’ reflections suggested an understanding of the active role detainees are taking in order to change their lives while in prison [S9], but at the same time they understood that having access to education can help to “be better integrated back into the community” [S7]. Moreover, students recognized the importance for incarcerated people to learn communication skills in order to “be able to express themselves to the people around them once out of jail”. [S9]

As far as the individual and social changes among detained instructors, SL encouraged participants to apply the newly-acquired academic knowledge to their everyday lives and propelled in them new levels of self-growth and self confidence in their ability to communicate in a more positive manner with different sectors of the population. Individual changes were reflected in the detainees’ comments about improved public and interpersonal communication skills that helped them to better the quality of their communication with other incarcerated men, staff members and family members. Also they expressed a newly acquired self-awareness of reduced fears and increased confidence while speaking in public. Moreover, the instructors discussed possible ways to integrating the nonEnglish speaking population in their speech club in order to break language and racial barriers between different sectors of the prison’s population.

At the social level participating in service-learning helped incarcerated students to realize how interpersonal communication skills brought positive change in real life situations and motivated them to use what they learned to help other detainees or family members to do better. Moreover, one of the goals of the instructors’ public speaking workshop was to help participants to improve verbal and non-verbal communication skills when dealing with real life situations such as talking to court and police officers, staff and potential employers.

As Frank, Omstead and Pigg (2012) state, differently from general higher education and vocational programs in prison, service-learning can help incarcerated people to see themselves and their lives “through the lens of higher education. When this happens the prisoner’s journey through post-secondary education evolves from being simply an educational experience into a transformative learning process” (p.31). This transformative learning process can be considered a key component in the re-integrative process back into the society. As abundantly pointed out in the literature, studies indicate that education is one of the tools able to transform incarcerated people into “engaged citizens” and to reduce recidivism (Chappell, 2004; Foley a Gao 2004, Erisman a Contardo, 2005). Education, in fact, increases self-esteem, critical thinking, and self-discipline, all attributes that combined “reduce the likelihood of a released prisoner coming back into conflict with the law” (Collins, 2008, p.78).

Our last remark refers to the particular structure of the SL project presented here. In the literature the typical model for SL involves reciprocal, face-to-face relationships between students and their partners in the community. By being exposed to unfamiliar circumstances, interacting and working together with diverse community partners, students gain a better understanding of the civic or social issues at stake. As Neururer & Rhoads (1998, p.322) state, service-learning “serves as a vehicle for connecting students and institutions to their communities and the larger social good, while at the same time instilling in students the values of community and social responsibility.”Moreover, as Jacoby (2009) suggests, personal and direct contact with the community partner helps students to develop a new “civic sensitivity” and sense of empathy that motivates students to become more engaged in the SL project.

However, for the SL project presented in this paper students never had direct contact with their partners, although students’ reflections showed a growth in empathy and a new understanding for the life conditions of their community partners. Lake and Jones (2008, 2012) identify four different approaches to SL: direct service with person to person or face to face interaction; indirect service that is not offered face to face but it is directed to the community in general; advocacy service whose goal is to raise awareness on public interest issues and; research service that focuses on collecting and presenting data. Our SL falls in the indirect service category not only because the students and their partners never met in person, but also because the purpose of creating a communication curriculum was directed to the entire community of the facility, incarcerated instructors, students and staff.

In the literature there are many successful examples of indirect service-learning projects, such as sending cards, handmade gifts or letters to hospices, children’s hospitals, veteran’s hospital or helping the instructors to design curricula, assessments or other pedagogical material for different types of institutions (Connor-Linton, 1995). Though students are not directly involved in fieldwork, indirect service-learning projects offer students the opportunity to learn about specific sectors of the community through the teacher’s research or social agenda and to apply their course knowledge for the creation of a service or product needed by the community partner. Most importantly, in the process of designing and creating this product/service, the lack of personal contact with the partner forces students to critically analyze the course contents and organize the information according to the student’s own understanding of how theories and knowledge can be applied to the needs of the community in question. As Connor-Linton (1995) states, indirect service-learning “sacrifices the immediacy of the student’s community service experience, but may enhance other pedagogical values of service-learning”; students have, in fact, the opportunity to “play different pedagogical roles” and different “service roles” such as research assistants and curricula designers in the case of QCC students (p.108).

Moreover, as Gurthrie & McCraken (2010) indicate, at times, a measure of anonymity between the SL parties might allow students to find their own unbiased voices to understand unconventional or taboo topics. As in the case of QCC students, the lack of physical contact between them and their incarcerated partners had the effect to “defuse” what Merryfields (2003, p.160), calls “triggers of difference”. Students had the opportunity to really think about the educational value of their services without being affected by biases and fears of having to enter a correctional facility and having contact with its ostracized  population As the reflections suggested, in absence of “triggers of differences” QCC students were able to reason against their own personal biases, to understand the value and the impact of their work on their partners and to see their partners in a new light: a light of redemption and hope.

Finally, in indirect service-learning project, the instructor plays a vital role not only because he/she has the responsibility to educate the students about their community partner, but also because he/she needs to create a sort of virtual environment that enables an open and ongoing communication between the parties that operate from different and remote locations. The instructor facilitates the dialogue between the parties through asynchronous discussions that focus on both the curricular objectives and the civic and social purposes of SL. However, being just a facilitator of the dialogue, the instructor needs to develop a teaching approach that fosters autonomy and collaboration between the parties (Gurthrie & McCraken, 2010). In other words, the instructor acquires the role of “facilitator of learning,” offering himself/herself as a resource, but at the same time fostering a student/partner-centered “educational setting,” where both parties “discover what it means to be autonomous, spontaneous, creative, and self-disciplined in their efforts to reach their own goals” (Rogers, 1967, p.57).

Independently of the type of approach to SL an instructor adopts with his/her students, this study shows that what matters most to students is to be able to deliver a service to a community partner by using what they learnt in class. Whether the service provided touches directly or indirectly the community in need, students involved in SL feel connected to that community through the service they provide. As long as the focus is on how to provide a service through a learning experience, I believe there is no one way or one best practice only in service-learning. All the four approaches to SL described above can be all equally effective if they enable students to transform their course knowledge into a concreate and deliverable service.

Conclusion

As the analysis of the students’ reflections show, SL acted as a vehicle of individual and social change among both populations. Students changed their individual and social stances towards incarcerated men and better understood the role education plays or may play in the life of these men. The incarcerated instructors on the other side reported to have changed the way they communicate with people inside and outside the prisonand to have developed a new sensitivity for sectors of the prison population that are excluded by the educational activities because of language barriers or cultural differences.

Despite the lack of direct communication between students and the prison instructors, the possibility to be all connected through the threads of service-learning made sure that the learning process was more than a mere memorization of facts or concepts, but became an instrument of personal and civic change. As a final note, while Student#1 felt that SL allowed her to be ‘a ray of light in the life’ of the incarcerated men, one of the instructors, when asked to reflect on the effects of the students’ material on his life, concluded his statements exclaiming: “Awesome! This public speaking training is a ray of sunshine for us.”

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About the Author

Dr. Ferrari-Bridgers is an assistant professor in speech and communication at Queensborough Community College. Dr. Ferrari-Bridgers’ research interests are in the field of linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive sciences and listening assessments. From 2012 to 2014 Dr. Ferrari-Bridgers collaborated through Service-learning with a northeastern federal correctional facility. In 2014, Dr. Ferrari-Bridgers was awarded by the Department of Justice and the federal correctional facility for her Service-learning work. Since 2015, Dr. Ferrari-Bridgers has been leading a series of college preparatory workshops for incarcerated students at Edgecombe Correctional Facility in New York City.

by Lindsey Jarrett, W Dunn & S Tomchek, University of Kansas, USA, Reynolds, Goodland Regional Medical Center, USA, & Mercer, Wesley Medical Center, USA

Abstract

This descriptive research study involves the collection of quantitative data using cross-sectional methods to measure the benefit of service learning across multiple college disciplines. After completing service learning and related coursework, students (n=42) completed a survey modified from the Thriving Quotient (Schreiner, 2010) and Service Learning Benefit scale (Toncar, Reid, Burns, Anderson, & Nguyen, 2006) to assess benefits related to personal and professional growth, among other outcomes gained from service learning. Researchers found that students from each discipline reported benefits from service learning experiences. However, no significant differences in service learning benefit exist between the represented disciplines. This study provides data to support the continued implementation of service learning in higher education as a tool for student engagement and interprofessional education.

Purpose

For decades, the graduation rate among American college students has hovered around 50% (IPEDS, 2014; Ishitani & DesJardins, 2002; Laird, Chen, & Kuh, 2008; Lockeman & Pelco, 2013). Some researchers hypothesize that this graduation rate is related to increasing financial costs of higher education (Education, 2013; Hacker & Dreifus, 2010; Selingo, 2013).  Another hypothesis argues that college students are unable to see the relationship between higher education and career outcomes (e.g., college degree, sustainable employment). Current research suggests that college student engagement in educationally purposeful activities significantly contributes to successful college and life outcomes (Hu & McCormick, 2012; G. D.  Kuh, 2008; George D Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, & Whitt, 2011; Quaye & Harper, 2014).

The purpose of this study was to investigate the benefits of service learning across various disciplines.  Specifically, the study set out to explore the impact of service learning on students in particular disciplines. We hypothesized that the service learning benefit would differ across disciplines. Through the measures in this study, we expected to find differences across students who experienced service learning in areas of personal growth, professional and clinical development, which prepare students for graduation. This study provided pilot data for a larger study aimed at assessing the benefits of service learning on lifelong learning in a sample of college graduates. Findings on service learning outcomes across disciplines may inform tailored service learning opportunities for students across college campuses.

Rationale

To prepare college students for a career after college, instructors are responsible for providing intentional, reflective and connected educational experiences (Youatt & Wilcox, 2008). Learning derived from lived experience (i.e. experiential learning) is a stark contrast to lecture and classroom learning (Dewey, 1938; Kolb, 2014). Specifically, experiential learning directly connects the learner to the lived experience of the content studied , which is quite different to the learner who only reads about, hears about and talks about these experiences (Keeton & Tate, 1978). By the 1980s, experiential learning had become an accepted term in education (Boyer, 1994; Fowler, 2008), gaining momentum through activities coined as service learning (Harkavy & Hartley, 2010; Warren, 2012). Rooted in experiential learning principles, service learning provides students the ability to learn course content as they serve the community and reflect on connections between course content and their experiences in the field (Bernard, Giraud, Rouby, & Hartung, 1963). Further, evidence suggests that service learning has become a popular pedagogical approach for enhancing student learning by involving college students in community service within their educational experiences (Chupp & Joseph, 2010).

Specifically, college programs across disciplines have used service learning as an educational tool to situate student learning in communities. The service component of this type of learning differs from community service in that service learning directly connects traditional curriculum with concern for one’s community (Kaye, 2004). Service learning is not a new approach, but has gained new interest as higher education has assumed leadership as a social system (Harnish & Bridges, 2012).  Service learning provides numerous benefits by helping students develop practical skills, learn to work with others in completing tasks, gain satisfaction in giving to their communities, and continue personal growth (Toncar et al., 2006). Additionally, students indicated development in professional skills, especially after completing service learning experiences with other peers in a group setting (Bazyk, Glorioso, Gordon, Haines, & Percaciante, 2010; Lu & Lambright, 2010).

Further, those involved in creating educational experiences in higher education are tasked with developing the tools necessary for students to connect learning in the classroom to their responsibilities in the community. Institutions are providing increased opportunities such as service learning to foster community engagement for students (Davis, 2013) without restricting the curriculum to a specific discipline, classroom or concept (Jacoby, 2003). The intention of service learning is to engage students in developing the skills and fostering their commitment to connect with society’s complex problems (Donahue, Fenner, & Mitchell, 2015), yet there is not a standardized definition of service learning across disciplines (Butin, 2006; Holsapple, 2012). Due to the lack of standardization of service learning across discipline, the study team anticipates differences of service learning benefit across the various service learning experiences.

Currently, service learning research is predominately measured by student and faculty reflection and lacks a consistent assessment tool to ensure educational and personal development outcomes (Bazyk et al., 2010; Maloney & Griffith, 2013). Research is limited in systematically accessing the service learning experience (Toncar et al., 2006). Additionally, limited research has investigated how service learning benefits students across disciplines and how personal characteristics affect service learning outcomes among students. While both quantitative and qualitative research offer valuable information about student engagement outcomes from service learning, this study aims to provide measurable, quantitative assessment.

Participants

This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the University of Kansas. The research team recruited students and course instructors (mentors) from the University of Kansas who participated in or taught a service learning course during the summer or fall semesters of 2014. Researchers used the university’s website and the Center for Civic and Social Responsibility to gather names of course instructors for all service learning courses listed for each semester. Initially, instructors from courses listed as an internship, practicum or student teaching credit on the university’s website were excluded. The research team contacted 44 course instructors through publicly available university email addresses to recruit participants. Researchers communicated via email, certain inclusion criteria to the course instructors. Inclusion criteria included: (1) service learning activity occurred more than once per semester, (2) service learning activity occurred mainly (at least five class sessions) on-site of a community partner  and (3) service learning activity was not used for an internship, practicum or student teaching credit. Course instructors who met inclusion criteria and agreed to participate in the study were sent recruitment materials to forward to the students who participated in their service learning course in 2014 summer and/or fall semesters.

Instruments

Researchers used The Thriving Quotient (TQ) (Schreiner, 2010) and the Service Learning Benefit (SELEB) scale (Toncar et al., 2006) to determine students’ perceptions of their higher education experience and specifically, their perceptions of service learning.

The TQ is a 35-item instrument that reliably (Cronbach’s alpha=0.89) measures five factors to explain the element of academic, intrapersonal or interpersonal thriving in college students (Schreiner, 2010). For the purpose of this study, the research team used an additional 24 questions from the TQ related to campus involvement, personal activities and demographics. We used the TQ to gain insight into the other factors, besides traditional measures of grades and graduation rates, which also may contribute to a successful college experience (Schreiner, 2010).

The SELEB scale is a 32-item scale that reliably measures the benefits of service learning (Cronbach’s alpha range 0.78-0.84) related to professional, clinical and personal growth (Toncar et al., 2006). Currently, the SELEB scale and the TQ have not been used together to document the experiences across disciplines. For the purpose of this study, the research team used both instruments to better understand how students perceive and engage in their college experience, including service learning, which may not be currently available through one assessment.

Participants completed a cross-sectional Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) survey developed specifically for this purpose. REDCap is a secure, web-based application for building and managing online surveys and databases. REDCap  is a secure, web-based application designed to support data capture for research studies, providing: 1) an intuitive interface for validated data entry; 2) audit trails for tracking data manipulation and export procedures; 3) automated export procedures for seamless data downloads to common statistical packages; and 4) procedures for importing data from external sources (Harris et al., 2009). Researchers combined the TQ, SELEB scale and additional questions to gather detailed information about the college experience, course curriculum and service learning outcomes. Since the survey contained questions which may be perceived as sensitive, some questions contained a “prefer not to answer” option and not all questions were marked as required. Study data were collected and managed using REDCap electronic data capture tools hosted at the University of Kansas.

Statistical Analyses

Researchers conducted a nonparametric test since service learning benefit was given as a rank order score of one to seven (1=not at all to 7=very much so). Specifically, we used a Mann-Whitney U test, designed to test the null hypothesis, that the distribution of service learning benefit is the same across two independent groups (Occupational Therapy/OT and Other Disciplines). The study team anticipated the number of participants may vary across disciplines, resulting in unequal sample sizes across groups. The Mann-Whitney U test is a nonparametric procedure that does not require the groups to be of the same size (Portney & Watkins, 2008).  We reported frequencies to describe the demographic and educational information of the participants. Researchers used SPSS 20 to complete all data analyses (SPSS, 2011).

Findings

Researchers sent the survey link and instructions to 10 course mentors found eligible in participating in the study. A total of 10 course mentor participants represented 10 different programs including Journalism, Honors, Mechanical Engineering, Music Education/Music Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Visual Art, Applied Behavioral Science, Architecture, Entrepreneurship and Health. For the purpose of this study, course mentor survey data was not analyzed, but provided researchers with frequencies necessary for recruitment and course description. For recruitment purposes, course mentors sent their respective students a link to and directions for the student survey. Course mentors reported emailing the directions and survey link to a total of 200 students. Researchers excluded one participant after finding the survey to be blank. A total of 42 (21%) student participants are included in the analyses. Survey participation flow diagram is shown in Figure 1. Sample size (n) varied depending on the question analyzed since the participant was not required to answer all the questions. Researchers report specific demographic and educational information to provide a description of the study population.

Figure 1. Flow of Study Participants

Demographics and educational information

Students who answered demographic information included 30 total respondents. Seventy-seven percent of students describe themselves as Caucasian/White, and 93% report being female.  The following age groups of the study population include; 21 to 25 years old (63%), while 37% are between the ages of 18 and 20. Thirty-seven percent of students reported having a household income of less than $30,000 per year. As shown in Table 1, study participants include students from the following disciplines: Architecture, Music education and Music therapy, Occupational Therapy, Women’s Studies, and Other/Discipline not listed. Additionally, the study population consists of the following student classifications: Freshman (33%), Junior (3%), Senior (43%) and first-year Graduate students (20%).

Table 1: Disciplines of Student Participants

Questions related to student outcomes from the college experience are necessary in understanding the student population. All students (n=40) reported full-time enrollment at the time of the survey, with 55% working towards a master’s degree. Sixty-seven percent of students (n=36) reported being at least satisfied with their overall experiences with the university. Forty-three percent of students (n=40) reported “thriving most of the time” in their college experience (Schreiner, 2014). The majority (95%) of students (n=40) reported receiving mostly A’s and mostly A’s and B’s in their coursework.

Community experiences and service learning

Researchers found college students participate in service related opportunities in addition to traditional college coursework. Students (n=37) reported frequently (27%) and very frequently (22%) engaging in “community service” activities.  Students (n=30) reported working at part-time jobs off-campus (47%), six (20%) students reported doing the same on-campus, while eight (27%) reported having no employment.  Specifically related to service learning, all students (n=33) reported participating across the fall 2014 semester (94%) and summer 2014 semester (6%).

To report the median service learning benefit across disciplines, researchers used findings from the Mann-Whitney U analysis. For the purposes of the Mann-Whitney U analysis, researchers form two groups: OT students (n= 13) and students in other professions (n=18) to measure the service learning benefit.  The Mann-Whitney U test results reveal no significant difference in the service learning benefit between OT students (Md=5.85, n=13) and students of other disciplines (Md=5.7, n=18), U=103.5, z=-.541, p=.594, r=.097.

Discussion

Specific findings from the study suggest that students across disciplines benefit from service learning participation (mean=5.75). Students reported high degrees of benefit across areas of practical skills, interpersonal skills, citizenship and personal responsibility. Demographic information allow for a better understanding of the factors that may influence service learning benefit. The sample population lacks diversity, yet echoes national statistics. The majority (93%) of student respondents identified as female. Although this may be in part due to the disciplines represented in this study, females are filling college campuses. For example, “at a typical four-year college you’ll count 127 women for every 100 men (Hacker & Dreifus, 2010, p. 181).”  Most (77%) study participants classified themselves as “Caucasian/White” which is consistent with national data of those enrolled in college (73%) and overall population (72%) (Bauman & Davis, 2013; Bureau, 2012). Although demographic information may have a role in studying service learning benefit, we consider the impact of service learning across disciplines is influenced by student experience.

Various service learning benefits exist for students across educational programs. For example, service learning provides health education students with hands-on experiences in the community to enhance learning by supporting engagement and participation in education. (Hansen et al., 2007; Seif et al., 2014; The American Occupational Therapy Association, 2014). This connection may allow the exposure necessary in understanding the differences vital to working within the community. Current research suggests that students in health professions gain benefits across areas of diversity, such as cultural competence, practice and advocacy (Flinn, Kloos, Teaford, Clark, & Szucs, 2009; Holsapple, 2012). This study informs service learning research by arguing that since similarities exist across disciplines, a shift in research methodology may be needed to understand the meaning of service learning outcomes for students.

Experiences as noted through reflective writing may add depth to the various benefits for service learning. Reflection is a vital and ongoing process of service learning that connects learning to experience through awareness, positive cognitive outcomes and personal growth (Kaye, 2004). Specifically, reflection allows students to connect classroom learning with community experiences by increasing the development of problem solving, critical thinking, and receptiveness to real world concepts (Eyler, 2002; Hansen et al., 2007). Further, service learning addresses educational stakeholders’ concerns about the lack of connection between classroom curriculum and lifelong learning and participation (Eyler, 2002).

As service learning develops as an educational tool for students, it is crucial to implement consistent models for students, instructors and administrators. The types and models of service learning provide a framework, which may be useful in examining benefits across college campuses, disciplines and individual courses. Instructors have the choice to use various types of service learning when situating students in the community such as, direct service, indirect service and advocacy (Heffernan & Compact, 2001; Responsibility, 2015). To establish intentional relationships with the community, instructors implement specific models of service learning. The following models may be used independently or in combination: “pure” service learning, discipline-based service learning, problem-based service learning, capstone courses, internships, and undergraduate community-based action research (Heffernan & Compact, 2001; Responsibility, 2015). Service learning is a complex pedagogical tool with various parts embedded in theory, practice and implementation (Felten & Clayton, 2011). This complexity allows for flexibility in the establishment of specific outcomes.

Limitations

Our study has several limitations. First, the course mentors recruited the student population, which limited the researchers’ recruitment strategies with potential student participants. This error in study design may have impacted the sample size. Direct recruitment strategies may make it possible for students to decide about participation; a common data base for all service learning would make this type of recruitment possible. When researchers can track their contact with students, they can ensure consistency of messages across all potential participants. Secondly, participants had the freedom to leave sensitive questions blank, which changed our overall response pattern. Additionally, researchers adapted some questions by creating groups (e.g., age), which may have limited the ability to understand age correlated to service learning. Future research should look at the correlation of age and service learning benefit to better understand how age impacts the service learning experience (Lu & Lambright, 2010).  Lastly, researchers created two groups for analysis due to unequal distribution of participants across disciplines. Current studies employed similar methodological strategies (Seif et al., 2014), but further research may consider additional strategies.

Implications

A study of 217 college students participating in service learning revealed higher satisfaction with their course, higher levels of academic learning related to their field and community than the 324 students not participating in service learning (Moely, McFarland, Miron, Mercer, & Ilustre, 2002). This finding suggests the importance of researchers to connect service learning benefit to the measurement of overall academic learning. By connecting both outcomes, educators bridge service learning activity outcomes and traditional course curriculum outcomes. Measurable scales, such as the SELEB scale, quantify the benefit of service learning; when combined with student reflections may provide evidence to advance service learning quality with mixed methods designs. To effectively measure the strength and duration of service learning effects, future research might also link to other college outcomes (retention, career choices and community service) as well as evaluations unrelated to the student’s grade in the course (Holsapple, 2012; Moely et al., 2002). Measuring effectiveness of higher education methods must also extend past graduation, such as studies related to the impact of service learning on employment choices and career trajectories.

Since students in our study report similar levels of service learning benefit across various disciplines, researchers might also focus on interprofessional opportunities. Our sample also included graduate students (20%), which is an important consideration for service learning as it is not currently a focus in service learning research. Future research is crucial in understanding service learning not only as a connection to civic engagement, but also as a tool in creating your professional role after graduation. Further, instead of examining how students perceive their own service learning experience, researchers may gain more meaningful insight into how service learning as an activity adds to the value of higher education as a foundation to successful career outcomes. Service learning experiences may help prepare students for a  successful transition into their career (Bazyk et al., 2010), but only few studies have examined potential impact.  For example, Seif et al. (2014) found that students who participated in service learning within interprofessional settings reported increased team collaboration and clinical reasoning skills. The foundational principles of service learning, such as real-world application, civic engagement and leadership may provide students with lifelong tools as they transition through their career post-graduation. Further, service learning may create opportunities to learn how to work with other people outside of their discipline, which is most often a skill necessary in most careers. Future research may support interprofessional curriculum as a key piece to service learning.

Limited research shows that certain types and models of service learning may facilitate specific outcomes for students, course instructors and community partners (Brown & Roodin, 2001; Jacoby, 2003; Meyers, 2009). If future studies about service learning employed established models, it would be easier to compare findings across studies and partnerships (Bazyk et al., 2010; Felten & Clayton, 2011; Furco, Jones-White, Huesman Jr, & Gorny, 2012; Torres, Schaffer, & Compact, 2000), thus allowing for a standardized framework of service learning that could be deployed across institutions.

Conclusion

In conclusion, those involved in higher education have a distinct responsibility to engage students in activities that foster growth in professional development, cultural awareness and civic responsibility in addition to their responsibilities for curricular content. This study informs stakeholders in higher education of the value of service learning as a tool for student engagement. Students across disciplines highly benefit from service learning activities, which allows for the opportunity to connect course curriculum to lived experiences. Service learning may be an integral part of the connection between higher education, community involvement and career development.

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Youatt, J., & Wilcox, K. A. (2008). Intentional and Integrated Learning in a New Cognitive Age: A Signature Pedagogy for Undergraduate Education in the Twenty-First Century. Peer Review, 10(4), 24-26.  Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=36133891&site=ehost-live

Note

This study was made possible by the generous support provided by the University of Kansas’ Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, Mark A Burghart, MOT, OTR/L of the University of Kansas Department of Occupational Therapy Education, University of Kansas Clinical Assistant Professor Dory Sabata, OTD, OTR/L, SCEM and the University of Kansas study participants. The study team utilized REDCap (CTSA Award # UL1TR000001) to distribute and collect online survey data. This research was supported by the Ringle Health Professions Scholarship and was conducted as part of dissertation requirements for Lindsey Jarrett from the University of Kansas.

About the Authors

Lindsey Jarrett, PhD

Lindsey Jarrett, is a recent graduate of the Department of Occupational Therapy Education at the University of Kansas. She has been involved in health services, community advocacy and family services for over a decade, currently employed a large health IT corporation. Additionally, Mrs. Jarrett has been involved in mentoring students through service learning activities for the last 5 years.

Winnie Dunn, PhD, OTR, FAOTA

Winnie Dunn, PhD, OTR, FAOTA is Professor and Chair of the Department of Occupational Therapy Education at the University of Kansas.  She has been involved in community based services for children, families and schools for 4 decades. She is the author of the Sensory Profile measures, which characterize children and adult’s responses to sensory experiences in everyday life.

Scott Tomchek, PhD, OTR, FAOTA

Scott Tomchek, PhD, OTR, FAOTA is Associate Research Professor in the Occupational Therapy Education Program at Kansas University Medical Center and Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Assistant Director of the Weisskopf Center at the University of Louisville.  He also services as the co-clinical director of the U of L Autism Center at Kosair Charities. Dr. Tomchek has over 20 years of pediatric clinical practice supporting children and families in various settings.

Megan Reynolds, MOT, OTR/L

Megan Reynolds, MOT, OTR/L is a graduate of the Department of Occupational Therapy Education at the University of Kansas. She received her Certification in Service Learning (CSL) through the University of Kansas after participating in service-learning at a community organization for adolescents. She presented on service-learning activities at the Kansas Occupational Therapy Association Annual Conference (2013).

 Nicole Mercer, MOT, OTR/L

Nicole Mercer, MOT, OTR/L is a graduate of the Department of Occupational Therapy Education at the University of Kansas. She received her Certification in Service Learning (CSL) through the University of Kansas. Nicole presented about the service-learning and the evaluation processes at a student-run free clinic (JayDoc) at the Kansas Occupational Therapy Association Annual Conference (2013).

by Sharon Ellerton, Peter Fiume, & Debra Greenwood, Queensborough Community College, USA

Abstract

Although research clearly indicates that academic service-learning provides multiple benefits to college students in baccalaureate institutions, there is less known about its impact on community college students; a population who may benefit the most from this pedagogy.  Four faculty members from four different community colleges within the City University of New York incorporated service-learning into their classrooms while also maintaining control classes.  Quantitative survey data on student civic engagement and college skills were collected and survey responses from those students that did, and did not, participate in service-learning were compared.  The data demonstrated meaningful differences between the non-service-learners and service-learning students, particularly in the area of civic engagement.  Service-learners were also more comfortable than controls in certain college skills, including public speaking, writing, group projects and interacting with their professor.

Introduction

Many institutions of higher education throughout the United States incorporate civic engagement (CE) into their mission statements as fundamental goals for their students (Leigh & Gill, 2007). Colleges and universities, including urban and rural as well as two- and four-year institutions, consistently recognize CE as a basic indicator of student success. Further, a significant number of American universities have adopted a particular pedagogy, academic service-learning (SL), as an important method for meeting both of these goals (Eyler & Giles,1999; Vogelgesang & Astin,2000; Kuh, 2008).

A recent series of meta-analyses that included hundreds of studies yielded results that clearly demonstrate numerous positive outcomes of SL on academic achievement, personal development and CE.  For example, SL was found to impact positively on students’ learning of course material (Warren, 2012), students’ increased personal insight, cognitive and social development (Yorio and Ye, 2012), as well as attitudes toward self, attitudes toward school and learning, CE and academic achievement (Celio, 2011).

With an abundance of evidence pointing to multiple benefits of SL, this study attempts to assess whether this pedagogy will have a similar impact on a specific population of students, those attending City University of New York (CUNY) community colleges.

Clearly, such investigation is warranted.  As noted above, the existing research has shown that SL pedagogy has positive effects on many indicators of student success.  However, while the research on SL in American higher education clearly documents the positive effects of the pedagogy for student success, and while this research is extremely well established since it has been conducted over a span of many years, to date, this research has been primarily carried-out within the context of baccalaureate-granting institutions.

For example, a recent review of empirical research identified only 17 studies that addressed SL within the community college context over the last two decades. (Taggart & Crisp, 2011)  While limited in number, the outcomes of these studies, nevertheless, support the value of SL for community college students.  Most of the studies correlated SL activities with positive gains in CE.  In some studies, higher grades were found among community college service-learners than in non-service-learners (Berson & Younkin, 1998; Hollis,2002), although though that was not a consistent result.  For example, SL developmental students in Prentice’s study (2009) did not have higher course grades but did exhibit higher retention rates, another indicator of academic success.  More recent studies also demonstrate that SL increases retention rates for community college students in developmental courses (Rochford, 2014) as well as in other programs (Ellerton et al, 2014; 2015).  Traver et al (2014) also demonstrated in community college classes that the type of SL project can impact student empathy and cultural competence.  Additional evidence supporting the beneficial role of SL for community college students comes from results of several large national studies through the American Association of Community Colleges, which were recently reviewed by Prentice and Robinson (2014).  Survey and focus group analysis indicates self-reported positive gains for community college students in terms of increased capacity for civic responsibility, critical thinking, academic development, career development and the ability to collaborate with others, as well as a positive relationship to retention and persistence.  Their “takeaway about service-learning” is that “multiple simultaneous benefits accrued to students”.  Similar results were found with community college students at one CUNY campus, who self-reported an increased confidence in course content knowledge, general education knowledge, workplace skills and an interest in civic engagement (Ellerton et al., 2015).

The well-established benefits of SL for students at baccalaureate institutions, along with the positive results of SL documented by a more limited number of studies at the community college level, clearly call for further, well-controlled investigations of SL within the community college context.  Further, the existing research of SL at baccalaureate institutions indicates that CUNY community colleges are exceptionally well positioned to assess the effectiveness of this SL pedagogy.  For example, New York City has a rich and diverse pool of potential community partners, and SL pedagogy is currently employed at several CUNY community college campuses.

Further, and perhaps most significantly, the student bodies at CUNY community colleges reflect important characteristics that have been identified by studies at baccalaureate institutions as most likely to benefit from SL pedagogy.  Specifically, students from historically underserved populations, non-traditional students, students of color, students from lower economic  backgrounds and students that entered college with lower academic scores have all been identified as benefiting from SL at higher rates than other groups of students (Kuh, 2008; Finley & McNair, 2013) and, importantly, student bodies at virtually all CUNY community colleges reflect these specific characteristics.

To be sure, CUNY community colleges present a significant opportunity to assess the impact of SL pedagogy for community college students and, as such, the following question comes into focus: Can the outcomes that show the positive impact of SL pedagogy for student success at baccalaureate-granting institutions be replicated at the community college level?  Clearly, this is a cogent question and, as noted above, provides the focus of this study.

 Key Terms and Constructs

Academic SL: model of civic engagement that promotes student learning and development through active participation in organized service experiences, structured time for critical reflection so that students connect their service to academics, and the intentional development of civic responsibility for all participants. (National and Community Service Act, 1990).   SL pedagogy is reciprocal so that students  providing the service and the communities receiving the service both benefit.  This reciprocity distinguishes SL from other models of civic engagement (Furco, 1996).

C³IRG:  Community College Collaborative Incentive Research Grants (C³IRG) Program supports the collaborative research efforts of faculty at CUNY Community Colleges

C³IRG co-PIs: co-PIs from the four CUNY community colleges that participated in the study, functioned to lead the development, implementation and assessment of the study

C³IRG faculty: comprised of the twelve faculty members recruited to participate in the study (three from each campus), and who implemented a SL project into their respective courses

C³IRG advisory board: formed of individual advisory boards assembled at each of the four campuses that included academic deans, administrators, faculty, technology experts and students

Methods

Overall Institutional Context

Since this paper attempts to systematically investigate SL at CUNY community colleges, it is important to acknowledge the inconsistent state of SL as it currently manifests on our campuses.  Although SL pedagogy is employed at most CUNY community college campuses, with faculty actively incorporating SL in their classrooms, there are many differences in the way this pedagogy is supported and implemented at each campus.  For example, financial and administrative support for SL varies widely from campuses that have fully funded administrative offices and staff dedicated to SL, to campuses with virtually no official institutional support – financial, administrative or otherwise – and where SL involves little more than small, informal groups of faculty and staff.  In addition, SL professional development varies from formal faculty SL cohorts to campuses with little more than voluntary lunchtime talks among faculty and staff.  Further, SL varies among campuses in its implementation, with SL occurring both as curriculum-based projects as well as co-curricular and extra-curricular initiatives.

Developing the Study and Research Teams

From this background, and supported by a C³IRG grant, four faculty co-principle investigators (C³IRG co-PIs), one from each participating institution, joined forces in the fall of 2012 to lead the investigation into the impact of SL on CUNY community college students.  All were experienced in SL and established leaders at their campuses promoting SL pedagogy.  This consortium represented the four boroughs of New York City that have community colleges: Queensborough CC in Queens, Hostos CC in The Bronx, Borough of Manhattan CC in Manhattan and Kingsborough CC in Brooklyn. Additionally, an advisory board comprised of academic deans, senior administrators, senior faculty, technology experts and students were assembled at each campus to help guide the project and assembled to form the cross-campus C³IRG advisory board.  Research assistants recruited at each campus assisted with the implementation of the study.

The C³IRG co-PIs met often to develop the project utilizing face-to-face meetings and subsequent electronic meetings to accommodate differing schedules and locations.  Electronic meetings included telephone conference calls as well as video-conferencing that brought together the C³IRG co-PIs and the C³IRG advisory boards.  These productive collaborations enabled the C³IRG co-PIs and advisory boards to address issues specific to each campus or cross-campus, and create a supportive environment for developing and implementing the project.

The C³IRG co-PIs collaborated to find common ground appropriate for all four campuses and finalized the format and protocols for the project.  Three interdisciplinary faculty at each campus (totaling 12 faculty for the project) who were already teaching at least two sections of the same course were recruited to be the C³IRG faculty that participated in the project.  Each faculty member agreed to participate in SL professional development provided by the C³IRG co-PIs.

The C³IRG faculty also agreed to develop and implement a SL project appropriate to their specific course into one section while not including SL in a second section of the same course to function as a control during the Spring 2013 semester.  Additionally, each member of the C³IRG faculty collaborated with a community partner on their particular SL project.

All C³IRG co-PIs and faculty, as well as each research assistant, were already, or became, certified in the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) and in Human Subject Research (HSR) protocols.  Pre- and Post-survey research instruments and protocol were developed by the C³IRG co-PIs and submitted to the CUNY IRB for review, receiving IRB approval with “exempt” status.

Support of SL Faculty

Professional development. Professional development materials including instructional videos were created by the C³IRG co-PIs and made available to the C³IRG faculty and other project participants.  Individual campuses had existing resources relevant to SL that were also made available to all project participants.  Further, each campus held at least two meetings with their teams during the course of the grant for progress reports and mentoring purposes.

Support for Implementing SL.  During the implementation of the SL projects, each of the C³IRG faculty received both logistical and pedagogical support from the C³IRG co-PIs and research assistants.  The research assistant at each campus administered both the pre- and post- surveys, helped gather data and entered the accumulated data into SPSS for analysis.  The C³IRG co-PIs served as mentors to the project’s participants throughout the term of the grant.  Additionally, funds were made available to participants through the grant allocations office at each campus for classroom materials related to the SL projects and other incidentals.

Data Sources and Procedures

Quantitative data collection. Quantitative data were collected through surveys where students were asked to self-evaluate their civic involvement and attainment of academic skills and general education knowledge.  Surveys were administered pre- and post-service to all classes, those that participated in SL (research group) and those that did not (control group).   The actual days of administration varied by college, and the class instructor was not present at the time of administration. Students were not mandated to participate in the survey; participation was optional.  Students were identified only by the last four digits of their social security number, and the questionnaires were stored in locked cabinets until the semester was over and final grades submitted. Inclusion criteria was all students in the classroom on the days the questionnaire was administered; only students under age 18 were excluded.

These surveys consisted of the identical 24 questions with graded responses on a 5 point Likert-scale.  In addition, the pre-service survey included questions on demographics and prior involvement in community service.  The post-service survey for the research group also included a question asking students to describe their project and 8 additional Likert-style questions asking students to evaluate the impact of the SL experience on several factors including connection to the college, skills and learning.   These questions were not on the control post-service survey.

Qualitative data collection. Qualitative data were collected as open-ended responses from the student surveys described above.  Both pre- and post- service surveys included 6 questions that permitted free response.  On the post-service survey for the research group the additional Likert-style questions also provided opportunity for short answers to better explain each response. Reflections from the C³IRG faculty were also collected at the end of the semester.  These reflections asked the faculty to comment on the SL experience, its impact on students, and differences noted between the research and control classes.

Study Participants

During the 2013 spring semester 155 service-learners (research/experimental group) and 88 non-service-learners students (control group) completed both pre- and post-surveys for a total student sample of 243.  The age variable was set with specific age categories, the youngest of which was 18 or younger.  This category represented 13.6 percent of the total participants. After the study, the researchers realized this category may include students under age 18; therefore, the category was removed to comply with IRB requirements.  Only a small portion of the students in the control group were represented in the age categories 31 – 34 (1.9 percent) and 35 and older (0.0 percent), so those categories were also removed. This resulted in the sample total of 243.

Disciplines represented in this study included: education, art, student development, English, dental hygiene, gerontology, biology, speech, psychology, sociology, media arts and technology, and cooperative education.  Community partners included: K-12 schools, college programs, a farmers market, community dental health clinic, nursing home, outpatient community home, domestic violence prevention organization, public city parks, and agencies providing clothing for low income clients who had secured employment interviews.

Research Questions

The goals of this paper are to determine if there are differences a) between the colleges on the initial pre-survey and/or on the post-survey outcomes, b) between the service-learners and the non-service-learners on the initial pre-survey and/or on the post-survey outcomes, and c) among the service-learners from the pre- to the post-survey.

Results

Demographics Characteristics of Respondents by College

The sample included 155 service-learners (research/experimental group) and 88 non-service-learner students (control group), for a total sample of 243.  Chi-squares were used to obtain general demographic characteristics of the sample and to test for statistically significant variables (see table 1).  For the general demographics, the research and control groups are combined for each college. Several of the variables were statistically significant.  When combining the four colleges, nearly 64 percent of the students were female, but there were statistically significant differences between the colleges.  Eighty-four percent of HCC’s students were female, while only 50 percent of KCC’s students were female (p=<.01). Age was also a significant variable.  For all four colleges, the majority of the students were in the 19 – 22 age group; however, nearly 79 percent of BMCC’s students were in that age category, while only 48 percent of HCC’s students were aged 19 – 22 (p=<.001).

Also significant were students’ identified race/ethnicity (p=<.001).  Among all four colleges, more students were Hispanic/Latino (47.2 percent) than any other group, followed by Black/African American students at 22.6 percent.  This is quite different among the individual colleges.  BMCC follows the general trend of the total, as did HCC’s students, although with slightly higher percentages: 64.6 percent Hispanic/Latino and 29.2 percent Black/African American.  KCC’s and QCC’s students were significantly different as well; KCC’s students were mainly Black/African American (28.6 percent), followed by Asian/Pacific Islander (23.8 percent) and Hispanic/Latino (14.3 percent).  QCC’s students were mainly Hispanic/Latino (34.6 percent0, followed by Asian/Pacific Islander (25 percent) and White (15.4 percent). In terms of gender, age, and race/ethnicity, all four colleges exhibited significant diversity among their students.

At all four colleges, more of the participating students were sophomores as compared to freshmen, which means they had already earned at least 30 credits and may have been more comfortable with college in general.  Credits earned was statistically significant (p=<.05), but this is suspect.  In looking at actual numbers, fewer students said they were freshmen than marked 0 – 15 and 16 – 30 credits earned (74 vs. 109) and more students said they were sophomores than marked 31 – 45 and 46 or more credits earned (162 vs. 121).  It would seem to indicate that students may not be aware the link between credits earned and class standing. However, although not statistically significant, when asked the highest level of education they intended to pursue, most students were quite positive and optimistic.  Most students at all four colleges indicated that they planned to pursue either a bachelor’s or master’s level degree, and many indicated they hoped to pursue a doctorate.

Although not statistically significant, there was a notable difference between colleges in terms of student transfers.  Fifty-nine percent of KCC’s students had transferred to that school from another college; 43.7 percent of QCC’s students had transferred in, 18.9 percent of HCC’s students had, and only 5.9 percent of BMCC’s students had transferred in from other colleges. All of the colleges had similar mean GPA scores among their students, all centered around 3.0.

Previous community service experience among the students also varied widely and was statistically significant (p=<.001).  None of KCC’s students had previous experience, and only 4.2 percent of BMCC’s had previous experience.  In contrast, 13.2 percent of QCC’s students had previous experience, and 32.7 percent of HCC’s students had previous community experience.  While students in some colleges (KCC, Hostos) were aware that they were enrolling in a course   with a service-learning component and may have self-selected service-learning, students at other colleges (BMCC, QCC) had no advance knowledge of the course service-learning component.

Overall, among all four colleges, the general student participant was female, age 19 – 22, Hispanic/Latino, and a sophomore with a goal of a bachelor’s or master’s degree.  The general BMCC or HCC student would be similar: female, age 19 – 22, Hispanic/Latino or Black/African American, a sophomore, with higher education goals.  In general, a KCC student would be female, 19 – 22, Black/African American or Asian/Pacific Islander, a sophomore, looking forward to pursuing a bachelor’s degree, and a QCC student would be female, 19 – 22, Hispanic/Latino or Asian/Pacific Islander, a sophomore, looking forward to pursuing a bachelor’s or master’s degree.

Demographics of Control and Experimental Groups

The researchers first determined whether there were statistically significant differences between service-learners and non-service-learners by demographics (table 2).  Chi-squares were used to obtain general demographic characteristics of the sample and to test for statistically significant variables.  In general, the service-learners and non-service-learners were similar on most variables.  The majority of both groups were female, aged 19 -22, Hispanic/Latino sophomores with a GPA around 3.0. None of these variables were statistically significant.

However, there were statistically significant differences between the service-learners and non-service-learners in terms of transfer status and previous community service.  The service-learners were more likely to have transferred to their current school from another college (p=.04), and they were more likely to have previous community service experience (p=.011).

Quantitative Studies

In response to the first goal, to determine if there were differences between the colleges on the initial pre-survey and/or on the post-survey outcomes, one-way ANOVAs were conducted to look for differences in pre- and post-survey mean scores of the items among the four colleges.  The differences between the means of the four colleges were examined on nineteen items related to community engagement and academics, which included general education skills and knowledge.

Among the pre-survey scores of the four colleges, in general, the means of all the items were fairly consistent, but only one of the fifteen pre-survey items was statistically significant.  Students were asked how likely they would be to volunteer at some point in the next twelve months. The ANOVA revealed a statistically significant difference in the means of the four colleges, F(3,205)=4.30, p <.01.  Tukey HSD post hoc tests showed that HCC students were significantly more likely to volunteer in the next twelve months as compared to BMCC students at the .05 level of confidence (data not shown).

There were fewer responses among the service-learners and non-service-learners for the post-test. This could be due to a combination of factors such as students being absent the day the instrument was administered, or students dropping the course. Again, the means of all the items remained fairly consistent, but not significant, except for two items (data not shown).  The ANOVA revealed a statistically significant difference in the means of the colleges for the item in which students indicated that they are confident that they will be able to apply what they have learned in their classes to solve real problems in society, F(3,135)=2.67, p=.05. Tukey HSD post hoc tests showed that HCC students were more likely to state that they felt confident in course application to real world problems than BMCC students.  The second item was again the likelihood of volunteering in the next 12 months, F(3,131)=3.54, p=.017, with HCC students stating that they are more likely to volunteer than BMCC students. One item that was slightly significant was students’ perception that they arrive on time to class, F(3,133)=2.59, p=.055. Tukey HSD post hoc tests indicated that BMCC students were more likely than QCC students to say that they arrive on time for class. As mentioned earlier, all four of the colleges were diverse, urban community colleges, so significant differences would not necessarily be expected.

Comparison of Pre and Post Responses of Service-Learners and Non-Service-Learner

To answer the second research question, whether there were significant mean differences between the service-learners and the non-service-learners on the initial pre-survey and/or on the post-survey outcomes, one-way MANOVAs were conducted. The researchers expected the means of the two groups to be similar on the pre-tests if the service-learner and non-service-learner groups were comparable.  However, if the service-learning project had a significant impact on the service-learners, the researchers expected differences between the means of the two groups on the post-test items.

First, the community engagement variables from the pre-survey were entered as a group.  There were no significant multivariate main effects revealed for the two groups in the first MANOVA, Wilks’ λ=0.982, F(9,143)=0.286, p=0.978, partial eta²=0.018.  There was no statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the service-learners and non-service-learners on the community engagement pre-survey items.  The academic and general education skills variables from the pre-survey were then entered as a group for the second MANOVA, Again, no significant multivariate main effects were revealed for the two groups, Wilks’ λ=0.932, F(9,221)=1.632, p=0.101, partial eta²=0.068.  There was no statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the service-learners and non-service-learners on the academic and general education skills pre-survey items.    This is not surprising, as we would not expect differences between the means of the two groups on the pre-surveys.

The third and fourth MANOVAs were conducted to determine if there were significant differences between the means of the post-survey scores of the service-learners and non-service-learners.  Again, post-survey community engagement variables were entered as a group. In general, post-survey means were higher among the service-learners as compared to non-service-learners. Service-learners indicated that their sense of self included a commitment to others; they were more aware of opportunities for civic engagement and understood its importance and were more likely to volunteer in the future.  The MANOVA revealed significant multivariate main effect for the two groups, Wilks’ λ=0.847, F(9,122)=2.454, p=0.013, partial eta²=0.153 (data not shown).  There was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the service-learners and non-service-learners on the community engagement post-survey items.  Given the significance of the overall test, univariate main effects were examined.  However, the only significant univariate main effect was for the item “How likely are you to volunteer in your community in the next twelve months?” F(1,130)=17.145, p<.001, partial eta²=0.117.  The service-learners were significantly more likely than the non-service-learners to state that they would volunteer in the next twelve months.

The academic and general education skills variables for the post-survey were entered into the fourth and final MANOVA, and again the post-survey means of the service-learners were higher than those of the non-service-learners.  Service-learners indicated they were more comfortable speaking or asking questions in class and communicating with their professor; they also indicated that they were more likely to interact with people who were different both in school and outside the academic setting.  However, the MANOVA revealed no significant multivariate main effect for the two groups, Wilks’ λ=0.975, F(10,124)=0.315, p=0.976, partial eta²=0.025.  There was no statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the service-learners and non-service-learners on the academic post-survey items (see table 3).  While we would expect no statistically significant differences between the mean scores of the service-learners and non-service-learners in the pre-test items, we would hope to see some significant differences in the post-test scores.

Comparison of Pre- and Post-Survey Responses of Service-Learners

In response to the third research question, were there differences among the service-learners from the pre-survey to the post-survey, paired samples T-tests were conducted on the community engagement and academic/general education skills variables to determine if there were significant differences in the means of the service-learners only between the pre-survey and the post-survey scores. Among the community engagement variables, the means of several post-survey items were higher than pre-survey items. Service-learners were more likely to state that their community was enriched through diversity, that they enjoyed volunteer work and were more likely to volunteer in the future, and that they were aware of opportunities to serve their community. The item “I am aware of opportunities to become involved in the community” was the only item that was statistically significant t(93)=-3.245, p=.002, suggesting that service-learners were more aware of volunteer opportunities after the service-learning experience.

Among the academic items, service-learners were more likely to say that they were more comfortable speaking in class and writing essays, were more likely to follow directions, and were more likely to interact with people who are diverse both on and off campus, after their service-learning experience.  Two of those academic items were statistically significant.  The item “How comfortable is it for you to make a presentation in front of a class or speak in public?” was significant, t(94)=3.208, p=.002. Students indicated that they felt significantly more comfortable making presentations and/or speaking in public after the service-learning experience.  The item “At your college, how often to you interact with people from different a culture, race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual identity than your own?” was significant, t(93)=-2.709, p=.008. The service-learners were more likely, post-service-learning experience, to say that they interacted with someone who was diversely different (see table 4).  We would have expected to see more significant differences between the pre- and post-test mean scores of the service-learners.

Several items addressing participants’ feelings about the service-learning experience were asked in the post-test of the service-learners only (see table 5). Frequencies were run on the responses of the service-learners to those questions.  In general, the students responded positively to the service-learning experience. Over 64 percent of the service-learners found the course to be relevant in their lives, and more than 78 percent applied what they learned in the course to problems outside of class at least sometimes.  Over 63 percent felt that the service-learning experience helped them to learn the course material at least somewhat, and 46.8 percent found their interest in the course was deepened because of the service-learning project.  Nearly 85 percent rated their experience from good to excellent.  Finally, 62.5% of the service-learners reported that their experience helped them feel more than a slight connection to their college.

Qualitative Studies

Students reflected on their SL experience in the form of free-write responses to question in the surveys and other reflective writings.

Student responses about their SL experiences were positive.  Many indicated that it deepened their understanding with comments that SL “…helped me understand the subject better”, and the SL “…helps me to develop a deeper understanding”.  Some students pointed out that the SL experience improved skills that were objectives of that course, such as a speech student indicating that the project “…helps on speech skills”.

Others pointed out that SL was grounded in an experience learned in an authentic environment.  One student wrote that SL “…helps you see the reality more.  It is more important and it will help you gain experience,” and another stated “… hands on approach works better than books”.  A psychology student contrasted book learning to the actual experience stating “..it is one thing to review a lesson, it is a completely new experience to help a person with that disorder”.

Student comments also touched on learned skills important to student success both within higher education and in the workplace.  Some students expressed increased confidence in their coursework, as a result of SL and others pointed out that SL helps them “…interact with others”.  Additionally students commented on the collaborative aspect of the experience, with one stating “…it could help develop the skills you need to work with people for a shared cause or goals”.

One student sent a note to her professor at the completion of an English course that looked at healthy eating habits, eloquently summing up her service-learning experience stating:

“Some students learn better hands on then in a classroom setting and I am one of …I got a tremendous sense of pride in helping my community and learned a wealth of information… Stepping out of the classroom and being able to inform them of healthier ways of eating and how what they consume today harms them tomorrow made me feel very empowered. … Learning in the classroom is beneficial as well but having the hands on experience heightened my level of learning… I strongly believe that this method of teaching is an excellent way to keep us informed and engaged with school.”

Several faculty reflected on student learning of course materials.

An education faculty member reflected on the concrete way students learned through SL:

“… students were able to connect academic material to the SL experience by identifying age linked developmental sequences as described in their academic materials to their observations of children at the field site and this seemed to make them more interested in their course work”.

A biology faculty reflected on service-learners teaching high school students “…because they had to teach the protocol to someone else, they made sure they knew all the details.”

A faculty member teaching a speech course that included a tabled presentation at a health fair reflected:  “We are a speech class and they did research, prepared presentations and used persuasion to attract attendees to our table and participate in an experiment.”

Several faculty commented on the connections students developed with the community as a result of their SL projects.  An art professor teamed with a community organization dedicated to addressing the issue of domestic violence.  The faculty member reflected:

“The students reported that collaborating with the community partner members enabled them to reflect on issues related to domestic violence on a more “personal level,” and helped them “put a face” on domestic violence.  The students artwork addressed the topic of domestic violence and was exhibited at the community college and later presented to the community partner.”

A professor in an abnormal psychology course collaborated with a psychiatric facility so that students could experience human conditions described in class.  The professor reflected  “…there were many ‘aha’ moments which students shared with me, or with the whole class, …There is a powerful personal and emotional component to their understanding.”

Discussion

This study attempts to demonstrate differences between CUNY community college student service-learners versus non-service-learners, as well as changes in the service-learners pre- and post-service.   Two different categories of student outcomes were analyzed independently; community engagement and academic/general education skills.  The multivariate analysis of the nine outcomes related to community engagement revealed that SL students had a statistically significant greater change in scores than the non-service-learning students. When testing each individual outcome, many demonstrated increased scores.   Post-experience, service-learners were more likely to indicate that they enjoyed volunteer work, were more aware of service opportunities, and were more likely to volunteer in the future.  The only individual item that reached significance was the willingness to volunteer in the next 12 months.

The multivariate analysis of the ten outcomes related to academics and general education skills revealed that SL students had a mean that was greater than that of the non-service-learning students, but this analysis did not reach the level of significance. When service-learner responses were compared pre- and post-SL experience, two individual outcomes did reach statistical significance.  One outcome was that students felt more comfortable presenting in class or publicly after the SL experience.  The second statistically significant outcome was that students felt more comfortable interacting with those others who are different from themselves.  Service-learners were also more comfortable with other academic/general education skills post-experience, including writing and teamwork.

Although there were a limited number of individual outcomes that reached statistical significance, this study employed mixed methodologies to support and help confirm these findings.   After the SL experience, service-learners reported positive feelings about the experience indicating it helped them learn course content, deepened their interest in the course, and that their overall experience was positive.  Further, student reflective statements were uniformly positive, touching on many benefits received as a result of service-learning projects.  Similarly, faculty observations of student deep learning and skill development strengthen the contention that community college students receive many benefits from participation in service-learning.

Although few measures reached the level of statistical significance, this data still shows clear correlations between SL experiences and student benefits, particularly with regard to civic engagement.  It should be noted that many of the published studies on SL do not provide data with statistical information, but, rather, present percentages of positive responses to outcome questions.  Many of the more definitive articles with significant student outcomes come from meta-analysis of many other studies, or from studies with very large numbers of students.  In this study, the original sample size was 243, with only 1/3 of the sample being part of the control group.  The small control sample resulted when several faculty had difficulty identifying courses to serve as the control study.

Response rates were another factor that limited sample size since, when administrating the survey, not all students in the research and control groups completed both pre- and post-surveys.  Perhaps a larger sample size would have resulted in measurable significant differences among groups.

Additional limitations must be considered when interpreting these results, including the organizational structure within the participating colleges as well as the heterogeneity in the delivery of the service-learning pedagogy within different courses and disciplines.   As Steinberg, Bringle and McGuire (2013) have pointed out, assessment of service-learning is difficult since it is implemented in so many different ways, and these differences complicate research and assessment of this pedagogy.

This is certainly true at CUNY community colleges since there are many inconsistencies in the way SL is supported and implemented.  As noted earlier, there are many differences in the way this pedagogy manifests at each campus.  One inconsistency is the way students were informed about SL courses and assignments.  At some colleges SL courses are designated in course catalogs and schedules of classes to alert students that they are selecting a course with a service-learning component.  At other colleges students learn the course includes SL once the semester begins. In some courses, individual C³IRG faculty members required students to participate in the service-learning project, while in others it was an option.  These inconsistencies may have impacted the manner in which individual students participated in the course and responded to the survey items.  It should be noted that although the different community colleges had differing levels of support for service-learning within each institution, this study did use systematic method s to, at least somewhat, level the playing field.  The C³IRG  co-PIs worked together to establish essential consistencies across all four campuses by developing quality, well-designed SL experiences, providing faculty professional development, and utilizing  the same operational methodologies (for example,  utilizing the same definitions of curricular academic SL, standardizing the number of required hours of service, reflection requirements, etc).  Further, when analyzing differences across the four colleges involved in this study, very few significant differences were found in student responses despite apparent demographic differences.  This supports the feasibility of a system-wide approach to SL research and assessment within the CUNY community colleges.

Other demographic variables may have provided meaningful information, such as student responsibilities outside the classroom.  This may prove to be an important issue for future investigations as many community college students have jobs and/or be responsible for the care of a family member such as a parent or a child under age 18 in addition to academic responsibilities.

Constraints on faculty time may have also limited this study. Implementation of SL is a time-consuming process, and the C³IRG faculty did not receive release time. Time constraints are particularly relevant for CUNY community college faculty who carry a heavy course load of 27 hours yearly; a load significantly higher than is carried by faculty at four-year institutions.

Conclusions

The data, though only reaching statistical significance on a few measures, still clearly supports the contention that CUNY community college students benefit from academic SL, with gains in community involvement and academic/general education skills.   This data demonstrates higher mean post responses for service-learners versus non-service-learners, increases in mean responses of SL students pre- to post-service, service-learners’ positive self-assessment of their experience, and student and faculty positive qualitative responses. The limitations of this study must be addressed when conducting this research in the future.  It is important to continue these efforts so that we learn how to maximize the benefits of SL pedagogy for all students and especially for groups of students that have been identified as benefiting most from this pedagogy.

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About the authors

Sharon Ellerton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the City University of New York (CUNY), Queensborough Community College (QCC) and has served as faculty liaison/ high-impact practices coordinator of academic service-learning (ASL) at QCC since 2009.  Dr. Ellerton is a reviewer for the Undergraduate Journal of Service-Learning &  Community Based Research and acts as a mentor for undergraduates submitting articles to this journal.

Peter Fiume is an Associate Professor at Kingsborough Community College currently teaching a wide range of courses in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Human Services. Dr. Fiume was the first faculty member recruited to develop and implement Kingsborough’s service learning program in 2009 and has participated in the program in various capacities since its inception at Kingsborough.

Debra Abston Greenwood holds an MSW from Eastern Washington University and is a doctoral candidate at Fordham University.  She is an Assistant Professor teaching Human Services in the Department of Social Sciences, Human Services, and Criminal Justice at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York.

 Acknowledgments

The authors thank the CUNY  C³IRG research grant program for funding this study.  The authors would also like to thank Josephine Pantaleo, Director of Academic SL at CUNY QCC, Mandy Fraley at CUNY KBCC and Kristen Hackett, research assistant.