for
the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts
Nov.
3, 2000
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Service learning has broad impact, by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff
 ohn
Reiff is a man on a mission, several of them in fact. His efforts
in a new position as director of the Office of Community Service Learning
at Commonwealth College are designed to support service-learning goals
within Commonwealth College, extend opportunities for service learning
to all University students, and enhance the University's outreach
efforts, part of its land-grant mission.Reiff says that, although his office is housed in Commonwealth College, it serves the entire University community. "It's at Commonwealth College because Commonwealth College has community-service learning (CSL) as one of its core values," Reiff says of the office he directs. "The other side of that is that this office is for the University of Massachusetts. It has the function of supporting faculty throughout the University in developing and carrying out community-service learning in their courses, helping students throughout the University to find appropriate, meaningful community placements, and serving as a bridge between community-based organizations that are doing community service and the University." Reiff has been involved with different forms of service learning at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of Michigan, and most recently at Tusculum College in Tennessee, where he was director of the Service Learning Center and professor of American culture. He also directed a writing-across-the-curriculum program at Michigan and taught in the interdisciplinary writing program at UC Santa Barbara. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and a doctorate from the American Culture Program at Michigan. Reiff says that in addition to enhancing their present and future roles as "active, effective, responsible, in-formed, compassionate citizens," students in community-service-learning courses often find they understand their course content better because they have had a chance to apply it. "Community-service learning engages students in work with members of some community, it engages students in service to those community members," he says. "By service, we mean action that responds to real need. "If it's a good match for the student, that action will stretch the student, will challenge the student, will move the student outside his or her comfort zone, require the student to develop the skills to solve new problems. "In the action itself is the beginning of learning. That learning is amplified by a variety of things the faculty member and community agency do." Community agencies can be advocacy, cultural, educational, safety, environmental, health, and community-development groups. And they can be providers of services in areas like tutoring, meals, recreation, resource and referral, mental health, and animal care. "The point would be for the student to draw lessons from his or her experience and place those lessons in the larger context of the subject matter of the course and discipline the student is working in and to develop a grounded knowledge through that." It's something that can be infused almost anywhere in the curriculum: physics, engineering, nutrition, because no matter what discipline you are looking at, people are dealing with those issues in community life. "One piece of the land-grant mission of the University is preparing students to serve the commonwealth. Citizenship in a democratic society [requires] inclusion of all citizens in the governance process and workings of the society. Where there are barriers—poverty, educational—those are barriers to the democratic process. I would want students to understand those barriers and how they hurt the society." Reiff's office is involved in several programs. It provides support to a first-year student-learning community at Commonwealth College, called Impact, the Citizen Scholars Program, and the Provost's Committee on Service Learning. The committee names a number of faculty each year as service-learning fellows. Impact is a year-long program that involves two CSL courses and group community-service work. The Citizen Scholars Program is open to all University students with a 3.2 GPA or above and at least four semesters remaining. All Citizen Scholars take a course called "The Great Society" in their first semester and another, "Citizen Action and Public Policy," in their fourth semester. In addition, they take three other CLS courses and are involved in at least 60 hours of community service each semester. Citizen Scholars receive a $500 stipend each semester. "That's supported by Commonwealth College but is accessible to all students with a community-service background and interest," Reiff says. "It's a delight to come into this position and have all this stuff to work with," he says. "I'm sure there are people offering community-service-learning courses that we don't know about." He says he hopes to support "the creation of enduring and substantial partnerships between community-based organizations and faculty so that the organizations can count on the University to provide students on a continuing basis to meet some of their needs, and the faculty can count on the organizations to provide ongoing opportunities for their students to fulfill some of their teaching goals." Reiff adds, "My goal is to facilitate that happening again and again and again, to help people find the right connection so they can proceed with each other." |
