The weak economy will continue to cause great fiscal distress among
state and local governments around the nation. According to the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, at least 48 states have
addressed or are facing shortfalls in their budgets for the new
fiscal year totaling $194 billion or 28 percent of state budgets.
The estimated state budget gap is $180 billion for 2011 and $118
billion and for 2012.
Although the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
provided roughly $140 billion in fiscal relief for state
governments in 2010, these funds are not enough to make up for
budget shortfalls caused by declining tax revenues over the past
two years. According to the National League of Cities, the
municipal sector will likely face a fiscal shortfall of between $56
billion and $83
billion from 2010 to 2012, driven by declining tax revenues,
ongoing service demands, and cuts in state revenues.
In response to budget shortfalls, many state and local governments
have enacted tax and fee increases and taken measures to implement
budget cuts through workforce reductionscanceling capital
infrastructure projects and reducing services to citizens.
No one can definitively answer, When will the economy rebound?
Times such as these provide opportunities for creative thinking,
transformative change, and new collaborative partnerships between
different levels of government, community organizations, and
educational institutions. Cities, counties, and states must find
solutions for looming cutbacks in essential services, public work
projects, social service, and parks and recreation programs, to
name a few. One possible solution is for public managers to build
collaborative partnerships with higher education institutions for
service learning and other service programs.
Every day, colleges and universities provide studentswho represent
a large and growing source of the nations volunteerswith
opportunities to deliver valuable services to communities across
the country.
Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the nation has witnessed a
significant upsurge in volunteers, particularly among college
students. Both on campuses and in surrounding communities, millions
of college students are participating in a wide range of volunteer
service activities, from teaching and mentoring children from
disadvantaged circumstances to collecting donations for the local
food banks to helping their fellow Americans recover from
hurricanes and other disasters.
According to the Corporation for National and Community Service,
between September 2004 and September 2005, nearly 3.3 million
college students ages 16 to 24 performed volunteer services
throughout the United States, which represented 30.2 percent of the
more than 10.8 million students who were enrolled in college in
2005. As our nation faces the daunting path to economic recovery,
colleges and universities remain committed to educating citizens
and building strong communities through civic engagement, community
service, and service-learning.
Campus Compact, a national coalition of 1,190 colleges and
universities dedicated to campus-based civic engagement, reported
that its member organizations contributed an estimated $5.7 billion
and 282 million hours of service to their communities during the
20072008 academic year, and 3.16 million students performed more
than 300 million hours of service in 2009.
As a public manager, it is important to not only identify the
different types of service programs offered by colleges and
universities that can benefit local communities, but also to build
strong partnerships with faculty and administrators at higher
education institutions committed to civic engagement and addressing
community, state, and national needs.
Differentiating Service-Learning from Other Service
Programs
The term service-learning has a wide range of definitions and has
been used to characterize an array of experiential education
endeavorsfrom volunteer and community service projects to field
studies and internship programs. To highlight the distinct
characteristics of service-learning in comparison with other
service programs, the typology in Figure 1 represents an
experiential education program continuum upon which various service
programs might lie.
Volunteerism
As the figure suggests, different types of service programs can be
distinguished by their primary intent and focus. Each program is
defined by the intended beneficiary of the service activity (such
as a government or community organization) and its degree of
emphasis on service and learning. Rather than being located at a
single point, each type of program occupies a range of points on
the continuum.
Using Figure 1, each of the different types of service programs can
be defined. Volunteerism is the engagement of students in
activities in which the primary emphasis is on the service provided
and the primary intended beneficiary is the service recipient.
Volunteers are people who perform some service of their own free
will without pay. Volunteer activities may include one-time events
such as beach clean-up efforts, one-day food drives, and recycling
events or occasional visits to local hospitals and elementary
schools. Although students may receive some emotional and cognitive
benefits from the experience, the focus is not on student learning
but rather on service provision.
Internships
On the opposite end of the continuum from volunteerism are
internship programs, which engage students in activities primarily
for the purpose of providing students with hands-on work
experiences that enhance their learning or understanding of issues
relative to a particular area of study. In these programs, the
students are the primary beneficiaries, and the focus of the
service activity is student learning. Students are placed in
internships to acquire skills and knowledge that will enhance their
academic learning or vocational development.
For many students, internships are performed after a sequence of
courses have been taken and are part of the students regular course
work. Internships can be paid or unpaid, can take place in
nonprofit and government organizations, and are coordinated by
faculty within departments. Although the student is providing a
service as an intern, the student engages in the activity primarily
for her personal benefit. As these students place greater emphasis
on the service being provided and the ways in which the service
recipients are benefiting, the internship program moves closer to
the center of the continuum and becomes more like field education
and service-learning.
Field Education
Field education programs provide students with co-curricular
service opportunities that are related to, but not fully integrated
with, their formal academic studies. Students perform the service
as part of a program that is designed primarily to enhance students
understanding of a field of study, while also providing substantial
emphasis on the service being provided. Field education plays an
important role in a variety of service-oriented professional
programs, such as social work, education, and public health.
In these programs, students often spend one to two years providing
a service to a school, health agency, or social service agency. For
example, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Social
Work, master of social work students spend two years in field
education working with community social work practitioners in a
variety of settings. While strong intentions to benefit the
recipients are evident, the focus of field education programs tends
to be on maximizing the students learning in a specific field of
study.
Because of their long-term commitment to the service field,
students understand how their service benefits those who receive
it, but their primary focus is still on student learning. On the
opposite end of the spectrumto field education programsis community
service.
Community Service
Community service is the engagement of students in activities that
focus primarily on the service being provided as well as the
benefits the service activities have on the recipients. What
distinguishes community service programs from volunteerism is that
community service programs are often more structured and involve
greater student commitment. In community service activities, campus
student groups or individuals are involved in semester or year-long
activities that address local, state, or global needs.
Community service projects can include weekly mentoring and
tutoring of high school students, developing marketing materials
for nonprofit organizations, or organizing fundraising efforts to
raise money for Haiti relief efforts. While the students primary
purpose for engaging in community service is often to advance a
specific cause, their engagement allows them to learn more about
the social, political, and cultural issues of a specific cause and
what is needed to effectively deal with that issue.
As the service activities become more integrated with the academic
course work of studentsand as students begin to engage in
reflection, discourse, and research around various community
issuesthe community service program moves closer to the center of
the continuum to become service-learning.
The Benefits of Service-Learning
Service-learning programs are distinguished from other approaches
by their intent to benefit the provider and the recipient of the
service equally, as well as to ensure equal focus on both the
service being provided and the learning that is occurring. In
service-learning programs, students learn and develop through
active participation in thoughtfully organized service experiences
that meet actual community needs and that are coordinated in
collaboration with the college or university and community or
government organization.
Many service-learning programs are integrated into the academic
curriculum. Students take a service-learning course in which they
think, talk, and write about what they see and do during their
service activity, as well as integrate their experiences with the
knowledge they have gained from their academic discipline. For
example, Portland State University has integrated service-learning
into the core undergraduate curriculum by requiring all seniors to
participate in Senior Capstone courses. These courses are arranged
by PSU faculty in partnership with a wide variety of community
organizations.
At their best, service-learning experiences are reciprocally
beneficial for both the community and students. For students,
service-learning is an opportunity to enrich and apply classroom
knowledge to real world problems; to explore different careers and
develop occupational skills; and to develop civic literacy and a
concern for social problems, which leads to a sense of social
responsibility and commitment to public service. For many community
and government organizations, students involved in service-learning
augment service delivery, meet crucial human needs, and use applied
research techniques to identify and solve community problems.
As state and local budgets continue to shrink and critical services
are cut, public managers could greatly benefit by building
collaborative partnerships with colleges and universities or with
public service programs to utilize undergraduate and graduate
students as volunteers and interns as well as in community service,
field education, and service-learning projects. The challenge for
public managers will be in finding the time and resources to
develop and sustain mutually beneficial community-campus
partnerships.
Developing Community-Campus Relationships
By necessity, service-learning involves a range of partnerships
within and across academic institutions, as well as with
governments at all levels and community service providers. These
partnerships are critical because higher education offers a rich
array of resources and tremendous potential to make a significant
positive difference in meeting growing human needs and in
addressing increasingly complex social and economic problems.
In many service programs in higher education, those faculty and
staff coordinating the program are responsible for developing
campus-community partnerships. However, often these program
coordinators are not aware of the variety of community issues and
the resources needed to address them.
Public managers at all levels of government are in unique positions
to not only understand the complexity of the issues facing their
community, but also to identify the network of stakeholders that
should be involved to addressing the problem in collaboration with
institutions of higher education. The first step in developing a
partnership is for public managers to identify which colleges and
universities in their region have service programs and to determine
who is responsible for coordinating the different types of service
programs that may be available.
Community service and service-learning programs are housed in
various locations on campus. Student organizations were among the
first coordinators of service programs, and many continue to be the
institutions focal point for service. Thus, a common home for
service programs is within offices of student affairs or student
activities, which can be found on many college and university
websites. There are also a number of service-learning resources on
the web that can help public managers identify service program
coordinators.
For example, the Learn and Serve website has the most comprehensive
information about service learning programs, policies, resources,
and research. Campus Compacts website provides information on
service programs for each of its member institutions and for the
Campus Compact office in each state.
Also, the American Association of Community Colleges has promoted
the value of service learning to the 1,200 associate
degree-granting institutions in the U.S. Its site provides
information on service-learning and provides an interactive map at
which one can locate community colleges and their points of contact
by city or state.
After identifying the service program coordinators at local
institutions of higher education, public managers should reach out
and make initial contact with colleges and universities to begin
the first steps in developing a collaborative relationship.
However, government organizations and community groups are often
reluctant to develop collaborative partnerships with colleges and
universities because there is a perception that service learning
programs are often conceived of as benefits bestowed on the
community by the university instead of as opportunities to partner
with communities to meet collective needs. To be effective, truly
reciprocal partnerships must be established.
Because the work of service-learning is complex and
multidimensional, it must be under girded by a strong,
interconnected partnership. The keys stages of developing a
partnership include designing and building collaborative
relationships.
Stage 1. Designing the Partnership
This first stage is focused on developing a shared vision and
clearly articulated values. Partnerships proceed from the idea that
the participants are members of a common community that they seek
to improve for the public good. In collaborative conversation,
partners develop a vision of how their community can be
strengthened and identify the unique talents and resources they
each bring to the partnership to realize this vision.
Stage 2. Building Collaborative Relationships
The second stage is composed of multidimensional, interpersonal
relationships based on trust and mutual respect that form between
diverse institutions to address complex community problems. Trust,
equal voice, shared responsibility, open communication, shared
vision, and clear lines of accountability characterize strong
community-campus partnerships.
Building these types of relationships takes time and energy to
develop and maintain, but successful partnerships can yield great
dividends for participating organizations and the local community.
The process involved in developing and negotiating a partnership is
as important as the partnership itself.
Partnerships should be developed and nurtured around underlying
principles and specific process and outcomes objectives. Successful
partnerships have a clear scope that includes considerations of the
boundaries of time, financial and other resource costs, and the
development and dissemination of products and other outcomes.
Stage 3. Formalizing the Partnership
The final stage includes completing a written partnership agreement
that serves as a tool for developing and sustaining
community-campus partnerships, and for introducing new levels of
accountability among the partners. This agreement should clearly
state the roles and responsibilities of each partner, along with
well-defined outcomes and mutual benefits.
When developing a partnership agreement, be sure to
- involve all key partners
- agree on the partnerships purpose, goals, and objectives
- determine each partners expectations and anticipated benefits
of the partnership
- determine the roles, responsibilities, and key tasks of each
partner; and create a timeline
- anticipate the partnerships outcomes and benefits
- anticipate the partnerships financial and staffing
considerations
- anticipate the partnerships products and resulting copyright
and ownership issues
- plan an evaluation process.
Future Promises
The potential is enormous for community-campus partnerships to
transform learning and the discovery of new knowledge; redefine
traditional relationships between communities and higher
educational institutions; renew civic responsibility; and improve
the overall health of communities.
