Increasing service-learning opportunities for our students is a goal our center strives each day to achieve, and the University’s administration has shown unreserved support. We appreciate how well Allenlundy pointed out the need for this service, the ways it benefits both community members and UA students and how it can lead to innovative solutions to systemic challenges facing society.
We did, however, want to clarify some of the numbers and implications in the column which may have shed an inaccurate light on the current state of service learning at the University. Allenlundy noted the University’s Service Learning Pro website recently listed 22 current service-learning courses, and implied these were the only service-learning classes the University offers. This is not the case. During the 2013-14 academic year, an estimated 8,900 students participated in 136 service-learning courses led by faculty members from every college on campus. More than 26,000 UA students completed approximately 720,000 hours of community service with more than 120 community partners.
Many service-learning courses, including those offered by the colleges of nursing and education, currently are not tracked through SL Pro and are therefore not reflected in the above numbers. The reason the SL Pro website sometimes displays a lower-than-actual number of service-learning courses in a given semester is that many professors have their own tracking methods and prefer to wait until the end of the semester to add information to SL Pro.
Over the past decade, service-learning has taken on an integral role at the University. The range of service-learning opportunities for students and the instruction and support offered to faculty members interested in teaching service-learning courses are among the best in the nation. In 2007, the University’s Faculty Fellows in Service Learning program debuted, and it now has 71 alumni members from disciplines across campus. The one-year fellowship supports faculty members as they create, implement and assess service-learning components for existing and new courses.
Many of their courses, as well as others, are highlighted in the annual UA Service-Learning magazine. The past two issues have featured 53 exceptional service-learning courses (again, this is only a fraction of the total number of service-learning courses UA offers), ranging from those in which UA students provide health care in rural China, Bolivia and Alabama to those that deliver loans to small-business owners.
Many service-learning initiatives at the University are spearheaded by students or through faculty-student collaboration. One of the greatest attributes of the generation currently attending the University is its members’ desire to take responsibility for the larger community and willingness to work toward positive change.
We and the administration are committed to instilling, building upon and supporting this drive.
Stephen Black is the director of the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility.
