Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning
Fall 1999, pp. 30-37
Campus and Community Partnerships:
Assessing Impacts & Strengthening Connections
Andrea Vernon and Kelly Ward
University of Montana
Research on service-learning tends to emphasize student learning outcomes and pedagogical issues and
de-emphasize the community voice. To be true to the dual responsibility of service-learning to both campus
and community constituencies, research must include both campus and community viewpoints. This paper
is based on findings from a research project to assess community agency viewpoints about student service
providers, and based on the data, provides suggestions for improving campus and community service-learning partnerships.
Research pertaining to service-learning as a viable
pedagogy continues to expand as higher education
institutions and school districts nationwide look to
service-learning as a means to enhance students'
public participation, active learning, and contributions to communities. Existing literature makes clear
that service-learning engages students in meaningful
service and provides learning experiences to
enhance classroom teaching (Astin & Sax, 1998).
Research on student impacts also points out that service-learning enhances students' psychosocial and
moral reasoning abilities (Boss, 1994; Kuh,
Douglas, Lund, & Ramin-Gyurnek, 1994). Faculty
also benefit from involvement in service-learning
through the application of theory and knowledge to
local problem solving (Lynton, 1995). What is less
clear, however, is the community's perspective on
campus-based service-learning initiatives.
Service-learning is a way for campuses to
strengthen their public service missions, and successful service-learning collaborations between
campuses and communities rely on equitable partnerships to meet respective parties' goals (Gugerty
& Swezey, 1996). Hollander (1998) elaborates on
the "engaged campus" as a place that blurs boundaries between campus and community, as well as
between knowledge and practice: "The engaged
campus is not just located in a community; it is intimately connected to the public purposes and aspirations of community life itself" (p. 3). Service-learning is a means to make real the engaged campus. A
review of the current literature on service-learning,
however, reveals a general lack of attention to the
community partner in service-learning (Ward &
Wolf-Wendel, 1997). If the community continues to
be overlooked in service-learning research, then ser
vice-learning may become yet another example of
an "ivory tower" approach to community "partnerships" in which the community is merely an educational laboratory and not a true partner (Holland &
Gelmon, 1998).
Service-learning originally sought to develop a
win-win-win relationship between the faculty, students, and recipients of service because principles
underlying service-learning are deeply rooted in
both the campus and community perspectives
(Sigmon, 1979). Yet service-learning research has
overwhelmingly tended to emphasize impacts related to student learning and pedagogical issues at the
expense of community impacts.
One important purpose of research is to guide
effective practice. Thus, the research on servicelearning needs to reflect both the original goals of
service and learning. If service-learning researchers
continue to ignore the community perspective, then
we are perpetuating the hierarchical and potentially
destructive relationship between campuses and their
surrounding communities that service-learning
implicitly seeks to remedy. By failing to look at
communities as active partners, those involved in
service-learning risk maintaining the status quo in
campus-community relations.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the community's perceptions of students and faculty
involved in service-learning as well as campus outreach initiatives. In addition, the paper seeks to provide specific recommendations for making servicelearning an endeavor that is marked by reciprocity
and collaboration.
Before identifying the questions that guided this
research, we review some more of the service-learning literature to demonstrate the need for research on
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