Faculty: Support for Service Learning

We offer a range of support for faculty who integrate service learning into their courses: community partner identificiation, organization and support of projects, reflection and assessment of service learning and the ability to track students' service hours through our online reporting system. 

For details, see our Guide to Running a Service Learning Course, outlining five phases of a best practices model of service learning: matching, planning, placing, running, and reflecting. 

We also offer yearly Community of Practice events where faculty practitioners of service learning share experiences and insights about service learning pedagogy.  Watch for our 2012-2013 calendar of Service Learning Events.

Collected information about engaged work at USM is published annually in our year-end reports.  (See the 2011-2012 Service Learning Report.)  Help us include your work and your students' service learning work by completing the Service Learning Activity Report Form.

For more information about service learning please contact Alicia Ethridge (formerly Sampson), Service Learning Coordinator, at 228-8092 or aethridge@usm.maine.edu.

With USM’s current focus on student success, civic engagement in the form of community-engaged service learning comes to the fore.  One of six “high impact” activities identified by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), it  has been shown to “promote deep/integrative learning and personal development” among first year students and graduating seniors (Gonyea et al, 2008).  Service learning has also been shown to

• correlate positively with intention to reenroll first to second year;
• positively impact academic outcomes such as demonstrated complexity of understanding, problem analysis, critical thinking and cognitive development;
•  improve students’ ability to apply what they have learned in the “real world;”
• have a positive effect on reducing stereotypes and facilitating cultural and racial understanding; have a positive effect on social responsibility and citizenship skills; contribute to likelihood of graduation; and
• contribute to career development. (Eyler, Giles, Stenson & Gray, Vanderbilt 2001)