Faculty throughout the country have been
describing how well Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While help their students reflect on their
lives and then get involved with larger public issues. Sometimes the
students do this on their own, reading the book in their classrooms, then
finding their own paths of engagement, both on-campus and off. For
instance, students in one Seattle Central Community College anthropology
class got involved, after being inspired by reading the book, in causes as
diverse as salmon politics, global trade issues, and groups working for
racial justice. Students at Georgia's Kennesaw State, where 2500 first-year students were reading the book in the 2009-2010 academic year, got involved in causes from gay rights to an NRA project to local literacy campaigns.
But there's also value in directly tying community
projects to classroom work. More and more teachers are assigning Paul's books in conjunction with individual or group projects where
students go out into the community, then come back to the classroom,
reflect on their experience, and write journals or papers based on what
they've learned. Many courses will also connect them with civic
groups doing good work on related issues. Faculty are also beginning doing
the same thing with my new book on political hope,
The Impossible Will Take a Little While
Here are some representative service learning
examples from faculty teaching my books, primarily Soul of a Citizen, but also from The Impossible. They should be useful for both books, and if you have examples that others might learn from, please email me with a sense of how you've gotten your students engaged. If you can include a weblink and your email address, better yet. You can also find a nice list of
discipline-by-discipline examples at the resources section of the Campus Compact site. Compact has also collected the materials from the 2008 Campus Election Engagement Project. Building off the original suggestions on the Compact site, I ended up creating projects in 15 states, largely through Compact's state affiliates.
Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
University 101: The Drexel Experience
Students in this required freshman course volunteered in the Philadelphia
public schools during their spring term. 2200 freshmen
read Soul of a Citizen, and will be again in 2003. Some participated in the
America Reads program, reading one-on-one with elementary school students
struggling with basic skills. Others taught the life skills and economics
program Junior Achievement. We encouraged students to reflect on the
stories of the students they got to know, and to compare Philadelphia's
inner-city schools and neighborhoods with the schools and neighborhoods
where they grew up.
Contact University 101 Coordinator Jackie McCurdy
St Cloud State, St Cloud, MN
Community and Democratic Citizenship
After reading Soul of a Citizen, my students in this new core
required course wanted to do something in the community. They came up with
the idea of creating a fully accessible playground that could be used by
all local children, whatever their physical limitations or abilities. We
had them research relevant models, line up community support, find an
appropriate site, write grants to city and private funders, secure
community input and volunteers, and document the initial progress of the
project. Subsequent classes will take continued responsibility as the
playground project continues.
Contact community studies professor Rona Karasik
For more detailed project and course description see
http://www.stcloudstate.edu/~cmty/Kaleidoscope.htm
University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC
Freshman Composition: Writing and Community
[This course was taught by a Glenn Hutchinson, a wonderful young faculty member who had
himself started a food recycling program at UNCC while an undergraduate.
Though Glenn’s politics are quite liberal, one of the leaders in the
college Young Republicans told me, when I came in to lecture, that the
course had "restored his faith in humanity."]
Students in my course read Soul of a Citizen, which really
inspired them, along with Linda Flower’s Problem-Solving Strategies for
Writing in College and Community. They then picked individual service
projects (some from suggestions I gave them), and their weekly writing
assignments grew out of these projects. Examples included volunteering
with seniors, helping build houses with Habitat for Humanity, coaching
soccer and other sports, working with children with disabilities, visiting
children with cancer in the hospital, connecting with International
students on campus, writing articles for the University Times,
teaching Japanese and Korean to children, recycling, delivering leftover
food from the campus cafeterias to the soup kitchen, writing Congress to
help change a law on immigration eligibility for Amerasian children,
writing leaders around the world to help stop abuse of elephants,
assisting animals at the Humane Society, mentoring "at-risk" students, and
beginning an art therapy class at a battered women's shelter. Their writing projects described the feel of their outside activities,
reflected on the purpose of their efforts, and explored the meaning of
being a citizen and how their work connected to issues discussed in the
class. Contact Glenn Hutchinson
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Writing and Research
This is a four-credit, freshman composition, service-learning class taught
through the Academic Opportunity Program and the English department for
students admitted through the Academic
Opportunity program, and otherwise not admissible. Students conduct
primary research into the causes of and solutions to, homelessness,
illiteracy, and hunger at any of eight community service sites (homeless
shelters, literacy centers, meal sites) and also conduct secondary
academic and Internet research. They begin with a rhetorical analysis of
Soul of a Citizen, which works as a great rhetorical model, and
inspires my students in what is, for many, their first step into the
social arena.
See this extended description or contact English senior lecturer Kathleen Dale
University of Colorado, Denver, CO
The Urban Citizen
This political science course helps students get involved in community
projects and uses Soul of a Citizen for discussions and reflection.
(The school has also taught the book in Introduction to Political
Science). The course involves students directly in community issues and
needs while developing academic and civic skills. Class members get
involved in direct-action service and organizing activities in the
low-income urban neighborhoods surrounding the university. The class often
meets off campus, in the heart of these communities, and involves the
participation of community activists and neighborhood residents. We hope
to foster the social transformation of students into persons who are
committed to rectifying political, economic, and social problems, such as
the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor.We focus on neighborhood-driven "community development and
organizing" strategies as one means to address these challenges, and
encourage students to look at deeper structural roots. Many of our former
students still work with us and donate time and money to their projects
after they have graduated. We’ve had our students keep extensive journals on their reactions to
their projects and what they are learning. These also include newspaper
and magazine clippings on themes related to their projects. Our goal as a
class is to educate ourselves and other community members in 1) becoming
change agents in the range of social ills which need to be addressed, 2)
understanding their underlying causes, 3) developing ways to solve them
from a grassroots activist level by personal involvement in existing
communities and developing and producing action-research that can be acted
on, while, at the same time, 4) advancing the ideals of
exclusivity and 5) developing and testing methods that will encourage
participatory democratic values in our communities.
I've posted the course description here. It's a very exciting model.
Contact political science professor Jerry Jacks
Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ
Civic Journalism
Civic journalism is news with a community service attitude. It is based on
the idea that the press not only should report on
problems, but should also inspire people to come together to solve those
problems. Students in this class performed community service by
researching concerns that are important in the lives of local people and
bringing these to light for discussion and action. They gained hands-on
experience in civic news gathering through speakers, field trips,
interviews, and personal involvement with local issues. (Past classes
covered important local issues like environmental pollution; AIDS
awareness; youth mentoring; the needs of the elderly; and substance
abuse.)
Because the campus is close to Asbury Park, a
community that is energetically grappling with a number of real problems,
the class focused their civic journalism efforts there. Students wrote
civic journalism news stories based on their research and experience with
important public issues in Asbury Park. Their stories were published to
the class website. The students also hosted a community symposium to
encourage dialogue among diverse community groups. The class used Soul
of a Citizen as its first textbook, to start the discussion going
about community participation and the role of storytelling (and new
reporting) in helping to make that happen. The questions on Loeb’s website
were very helpful for getting students to talk about the book.
Class website:
http://bluehawk.monmouth.edu/~enovek/civic.html
Stories written by the class:
http://bluehawk.monmouth.edu/~enovek/stories.html
Contact Dr. Eleanor Novek, Department of Communication
Baldwin Wallace College, Berea OH
Students at Baldwin-Wallace College's Brain Leadership Program have been
reading Soul of a Citizen as a core resource for years. The book helped give them a
framework to participate in
Ohio Free the Vote,
a 2004 project that sent escorted volunteers to register people in local Cleveland
jails who, because they were awaiting trial, were eligible to vote and gave
them forms to request absentee ballots, that the Cayahoga Board of Elections
then sent workers in to deliver and collect. Baldwin Wallace students participating in
a class of the Brain Leadership program registered over 700 people to vote in
the 2004 Presidential election. Students made a concrete difference, compared their
own experiences about civic participations to the analyses in the books they read
for their courses, and saw their existing assumptions challenged about who should
be allowed to participate in shaping a democratic society.
In 2008 Dr Hansfro had her students volunteer with a self-selected political campaign, initiative, or nonpartisan voter registration or engagement effort. Click here for a
longer description
including a powerful reflection by a
Baldwin Wallace student who found her assumptions shaken to the core. Or contact
Brain Leadership program director Dr Tiffany Hansbro
Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, FL
Malaria Project
Courtney Dwyer Satkoski, Foundations of Civic Engagement Instructor
Students in a couple of my classes created a project to spread awareness of the plight of individuals living in sub-Saharan Africa from mosquito-vectored malaria. My students worked through the Carter Center to help provide mosquito nets, and raised over $13,000 which was then doubled in a matching grant. It was enough to send 5,200 mosquito nets to families in Kanke Nigeria. They did this by selling T-shirts, baked goods, cub and bottle holders, holding car washes, selling at flea markets and hosting a 5K. They also creating display boards, Facebook pages, MySpace pages and more to raise awareness about this deadly and preventable disease. See www.fgcumalariaproject.com
Tusculum College, Greenville, TN
Citizenship and Social Change
This is a required course for all Tusculum students that’s been
going for a couple of years. I coordinated field service with assistance
from the campus Service-Learning Center. Students use their community
service to provide concrete experiences that they’re encouraged to reflect
on, and that can help them evaluate the theory of community and the
practice of service. Groups they volunteered with include the Sierra Club
and Habitat for Humanity.
Contact psychology professor Melinda Dukes
Adelphi University, Long Island, NY
I'm not sure what service projects students did, but Adelphi had all their first-yera students reading The Impossible Will Take a Little While and are now considering having them read Soul's updated edition. Their students wrote some amazing reflective papers framed as letters to Loeb. You can read excerpts here.
University of Texas, Austin, TX
Persuasive Reading and Writing
Students in this composition courses, between their freshman and sophomore
years, received scholarships for being first-generation college students.
They were each given laptop computers and returned to their hometowns for
the summer, where they worked in a service-learning placement of their
choice. It was a distance-learning course: We communicated by computer. I
set up discussion forums on the course webpage and asked them questions
every week about either the week's readings from Loeb’s book or their
placements. I often used study questions from the book's webpage. Many of
the students (and I) found the book inspirational--a powerful antidote to
our tendency toward feeling overwhelmed by the challenges facing the
country.
Students then wrote a research paper about
an issue connected with their placements. Students wrote on, among other
things: bilingual education (a Mexican-American student interviewed family
members about their experiences in bilingual ed classes); multiculturalism
in education (a student worked at an intensive summer program for
inner-city kids); increasing high school graduation rates among
Mexican-American women (a student worked at a program that helps women get
GEDs and go to college); the transition from foster care to adulthood (a
student who had been a foster child now works with the state foster care
program); music therapy (a student worked with a nonprofit that does music
therapy); animal neglect (a student worked at an animal shelter);
unionization and low-paid service workers (a student worked at Goodwill).
Students gravitated mostly to work that
made tangible, immediate differences in individuals' lives—rather than the
kinds of work that furthers more systemic social change. I’d like to think
about how to incorporate both kinds of work for my future service-learning
courses.
Contact Julia
Garbusnow at Univ of Northern Colorado
Florida International University, Miami, FL
Lives, Livelihood, and Community
This course helped students reflect on their role in the community. My
seniors read Soul of a Citizen, then participated in a mentoring
project at a low-income high school, helped seventh graders with their
homework, assisted in providing care to cancer patients, helped prepare
high school students for the transition to college, assisted low-income
citizens with tax preparation, worked in a social justice project with
seniors, and helped feed the homeless. They then came back to class to
reflect on their experiences. We complemented Soul of a Citizen with John Dewey's The Public and Its Purposes, which gave a nice
theoretical balance. Contact management professor and honors college director Robert Hogner. More recently he's been assigning The Impossible and I got a great response when visiting his international business class—students reading it came from 35 different countries
Pacific University, Forest Grove, OR
Advanced Service Learning
Students integrate reflection on their service experiences with discussion
of the themes and examples from the book. Students in this class work on a
variety of service projects from Big Buddy programs to more political
efforts, like environmental campaigns.
Contact service learning coordinator Ellen Hastay
University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC
Communications and Community Service Learning
Students read this excellent book and reflected on it in conjunction with
their community projects. Soul of a Citizen helped them see that
everyday people can be leaders and can make a difference. Organizations
they worked with included: Action Greensboro, a civic initiative to
improve the community and economic opportunities for Greensboro; Compeer,
an agency that works with terminally mentally ill; Jackson Elementary
after-school program, designed to help students improve skills so they can
pass end-of-course testing; Immigrant Health Access Project, tutoring and
helping students who are new immigrants with English and school work; Big
Brothers Big Sisters (many made a year’s commitment although the class
ended in May); Piedmont Ovarian Cancer Society, working to raise funds for
Ovarian Cancer issues; and UNCG Connections, teaching computer skills to
immigrants.
Contact Spoma Jovanovic, assistant professor of communications: or UNCG Leadership and Service Learning coordinator: Anne Powers
Providence College, Providence, RI
Practicum in Community Service
I've been using Soul of a Citizen as a reading for this
two-semester course for Public and Community Service majors. I teach the
course with a community member and the community service placement
director of the Feinstein Institute of Public and Community Service at the
College. Students enrolled in the Practicum are concurrently placed in
community agencies and schools and assigned to work with faculty teaching
other courses that have a service-learning component. Their responsibilities include working with the site
to manage the service of students enrolled in the class to which they've
been assigned, leading reflection sessions with those students to
facilitate learning, and working with faculty to keep them abreast of
happenings on site. At the same time, the Practicum encourages students
to reflect on their own view of service and to develop a sense of how they
wish to incorporate service into their future careers. Soul of a
Citizen is used as a central reading for the class throughout the two
semesters. Students read chapters and discuss different issues as they
relate to their work on site and with students.
Contact Professor Jane Callahanor calahan@providence.edu
Ball State University, Muncie IN
Creative Writing in the Community
In this required course for creative writing majors, students are matched
with outside writing partners from groups like Hillcroft Services, Inc.
(group home residents with mental challenges), Big Brothers Big Sisters
(clients and volunteers) and residents of Heritage Retirement Village.
Students meet with these partners for a minimum of five visits (one
hour each) to become acquainted and then explore a significant moment or
event in that person’s life. This semester, students read Soul of a
Citizen, and the directors of involved agencies gave presentations on
their respective agencies and client population. Paul Loeb also spoke with
the class the class as part of a February visit sponsored by the Lilly
Endowment. Students also read literature (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and
drama) that focuses on issues faced by the chosen agencies and their
clients. The the course touches upon psychology, history (of Muncie and
its relationship with these particular populations) engaged), sociology,
social work, linguistics, women’s issues, and socio-political matters.
The course lets
student writers practice the techniques of characterization,
point-of-view, setting, & conflict so that in fiction or nonfiction, prose
takes on new meaning, intensity, and originality as they rend their
writing partner’s story. It also offers the opportunity for the students
to share their skills as creative writers (as they hone the techniques)
with community residents. As the students develop as writers, they also
develop a broader perspective of the complex ways through which
individuals cope with their situations and environments. The course
capstone will be a published collection of these works, celebrated at a
public reception.
Click here for an extended description or contact Barbara Bogue, Dept. of English.
Franklin College, Franklin, IN
Religion, Values, and the Self
Students read Soul of a Citizen in this capstone general education
course required of all juniors, along with reading Tuesdays With Morrie
and seeing films like Paying It Forward or Mr. Holland's Opus.
The class helps them examine their personal philosophy of
happiness, meaning, success, and service. They engage in 20 hours of
community service as part of it, then write a reflection paper (7-10
pages) in which they integrate class materials and their experience.
Service activities included: tutoring children at the Girls' and Boy's
Clubs; CROP Hunger Walk; organizing breast cancer 5K run; adult literacy
program at local county library; coaching "bitty-league" football; Big
Brothers/Big Sisters; local food pantry; Citizens' Action Coalition, a
group that monitors the costs charged by utilities; public relations for
Planned Parenthood; teachers' aides; highway litter clean-up; The Lord's
Cupboard--a second-hand furniture and furnishings store;
adopt-a-"grandparent" program at local Masonic Home; working with
handicapped children in local school system; tutoring at juvenile
detention center in town; helping with educational programming at battered
women's center in nearby Indianapolis; coaching after-school basketball;
working at a hospice; and helping at Indianapolis AIDS awareness center.
Contact Chaplain Cliff Cain
Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg VA
I am using components of the book in my
Community Leadership Development class. My students--15 first year
students enrolled in a Residential Leadership Community—are working on
literacy projects with middle schoolers in conjunction with the class.
Usually, I ask students to complete a service-learning agreement using one
of the Center's standard forms to demonstrate their relationship in the
community. This semester, I decided that a more meaningful activity would
be for them to construct a "chain of inspiration" showing the formation
and development of their community service site. I culled the chain of
inspiration idea from Loeb's book. I illustrated the concept by creating
an overhead of one of the chains he described, beginning with the
teen-aged girl asking her missile designer father why he created such
terrible weapons of destruction which then led to the father's soul
searching, his getting a Catholic Bishop involved, and so on leading to
the end of the cold war. Loeb's book is great for inspiring so many ideas.
Contact Service-Learning Center director Michele James-Deramo
[AND FROM ANOTHER FIRST YEAR COURSE WITH A DIFFERENT PROFESSOR]
In our community development course, students worked in a lower income
neighborhood in Roanoke, VA that was trying to organize and rebuild
itself. They augmented their 25-hour service with a lecture class and
peer-led discussion sections. One group conducted an asset map analysis of
the tenet population of their neighborhood and the other conducted a needs
assessment, working with a community group that was just starting out. We
used Soul of a Citizen to explore themes in organizing: connection
to something larger, keeping motivated and not burning out, overcoming
social barriers, dealing with cynicism, etc. Each week a different student
group would teach the class based on the themes in the book, leading
discussions, developing class activities, and integrated reflection on
their fieldwork. The course broke the traditional mold of expert teacher
lecturing to student, and Soul of a Citizen provided great
parallels to themes students observed in their community partnership. By
having to intentionally apply the book’s themes to their work, they got a
lot out of it.
Contact Instructor Nandini Assar,
Instructor, Residential Leadership Community.
University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN
"I just finished facilitating a course called Voices of Poverty,
during which 15 undergrads took a trip to D.C. for their spring break. I
included your book as a pre-read and it was a wonderful introduction that
set the stage for the rest of the course. In addition to the usual 'direct
service experience', I designed a component that included advocacy
experiences/service learning. I only know of groups that focus on one or
the other, so this was an experiment, but very powerful. Kids who were
more interested in the direct service, saw the need for also becoming a
voice for those service, while the poli sci, majors, etc, while up on the
politics, also got first hand experiences with how those decisions
actually affect folks in real life. It offered wonderful growing
experiences for all and I learned so much I can't wait to do it again!"
Contact Cathy Hart, Center on Education and Lifelong Learning,
Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI
"I taught a new a course with a Service-Learning prerequisite called
"Christian Faith and Justice," conceived as Public Theology, a new genre.
Students who signed on all got involved in one form of community service
or other. About five are doing jail visiting with inmates, for example. We
asked the students how people they met at the S–L sites feel about,
understand, speak about and deal with their situations. What are their
stories and expectations? What social structures touch their lives? What
public policies affect them? What changes do they seek, if any? How do
their struggles witness to truths and values the rest of society may
overlook or resist? What possibilities for participation in the democratic
process have they?
The class sought gradual shift in student perspective from generosity in the alms of time and money to citizen–advocacy for just social structures. It is my opinion that realizing this possibility poses a major challenge to the Churches and to individual Christians in America, and represents an important area for common witness by Christianity contributing to American society." Contact Tom Hughson, Dept of Religion
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta
I used your book in
a graduate course I teach entitled, Transforming Schools: the Process of
Change as a visiting professor at the University of Alberta.
One student initiated an International Baccalaureate Program at the
school where he taught. In the "Civics" social studies course that he
teaches, his students are all involved in case studies of particular
issues within their own communities. Another student implemented a program to assist new minority children
at her school in a buddy program so the new children would feel welcome
and have a friend to show them around the school. In the same vein, another class member implemented an adult mentor
program so that every adult at the school has a small group of kids to
mentor and befriend. This includes cooks and custodians. Another student changed the entire curriculum of the school to spend
time talking about personal responsibility and making a difference in the
lives of others. This really connected with the students at the school
who then went out and did good deeds around the school and community. A
kind of random acts of kindness up to each student who is then free to
report it to others or to keep it to themselves.
Contact Blaine Ackley, Department of Education, University of
Portland, Portland, OR
Lewis and Clark High School, Spokane, WA
Practicum in Community Involvement
This year-long course mixes a variety of seniors, from college-bound
"stars" on the AP track, to students on the verge of dropping out. They
intern two hours a week at a community non-profit, and then do research on
a related issue while reading excerpts from Soul of a Citizen and
other relevant books. Examples include researching the long-term
psychological effects of pediatric disease at a Pediatric Oncology Unit,
making a film on media depictions of poverty, and working with a local
lands council on the effects of logging on wildlife, with Amnesty
International on death penalty issues, with the Support Care and
Networking program on the social history of mental illness, and with a
local crisis nursery on cycles of child abuse.
Contact social studies teacher John Hagney
Notre Dame de Namur University, San Mateo CA
The Community Psychology class of Notre Dame de Namur University (NDNU) partnered with the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center of San Mateo (PCRQ. They worked with PCRC's Civic Engagement Initiative as it relates to children and families. Students were involved in facilitation training, community dialogues, and reflection activities. Click here for more info or contact psychology professor Gretchen Wehrle
Georgetown University, Washington DC
The Project D.C. urban research internship is designed as a community based research seminar. The central feature of the course is that each student will work in a research internship with a community based organization (CBO) or a D.C. government agency in order to undertake a collaborative research project of value to the organization. The student, site supervisor, and faculty member will collaborate in the design of the project to which all three parties will agree which will be carried out by the student over the course of the academic year. The research process and product are intended to help advance the work of the CBO and the student's academic and personal development.
See here for detailed discription or contact sociology professor Sam Marullo
Rochester Community and Technical College, Rochester, MN
Rochester Community & Technical College. They
assigned The Impossible as a common reading across the curriculum, which meant
sociology, English, political science, nursing, even some chemistry students. They had students do a variety of creative projects . Their
digital arts students read it, then made a wall opposite the college bookstore where
you touch various tiles and hear the voices of different students reading their
favorite quotes. Their speech students did dramatic interpretative
readings of the poems. Art students created installations taking off from various
essays. The school's health classes used the Terry Tempest Williams essay for
breast cancer awareness week and the Diane Ackerman one for discussions of
youth suicide prevention. One young woman did a whole slide show giving
background on an essay about the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina
and the people who succeeded in getting the Nazis to free 1700 imprisoned
Jews from the Berlin police station. She asked people to write responses
on Post-it notes while they watched,
then assembled
these responses into a poem that she read to the class. Students in most of the classes
did accompanying community service projects, and those I met in a recent
visit said they found the book completely inspiring. The school also
created a special website including
annotated study questions, profiles and
annotated bibliographies of the authors I included, and links to
student multimedia presentations and
to a video of my campus lecture.
They're also compiling their
own book of
student essays responding to my themes. You can more information from
coordinator Lori Halverson Wente.