Service learning is big time activity in Geography Dept.

The Geography Department recently has become a pioneer of sorts, by making the service learning experience for undergraduates an area of emphasis across its curriculum. The department has greatly expanded its service learning offerings, making increasing connections between classroom instruction and community involvement. The number of courses in Geography offering a service learning option has expanded in little more than a year from three to 11. The expansion has been facilitated by a 1994 grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education of the Department of Education, which has permitted the hiring of a TA in Geography to assist in the development of service learning options and also the support of a student coordinator assigned to Geography in the Carlson Center.

"Most student have a single, isolated exposure to service learning," said Kim Johnson-Bogart, director of the Carlson Center. "Our goal with this grant has been to work with particular departments to provide students opportunities across courses and over time that could deepen their critical understandings as they progress through the major."

Geography Department chairman David Hodge said, "Our department as a whole is aggressive in pursuing improvements in undergraduate education and in emphasizing active learning. The nature of our discipline, and the goals of service learning, dovetail nicely."

Hodge himself experimented with a service learning option in a large lecture class, Urban Geography, which has nine sections of students. "We decided to designate one section of the class as service learning and announced its availability the first day of class. There was a stampede to the front of the room to sign up."

Hodge's experience was encouraging. He was especially impressed with the enthusiasm of the service learning students. The TA for Urban Geography, Val Pate, also found the students' attitudes stimulating. "If I could clone those students and just teach them, I'd be very happy," she said. "We had a highly motivated group, perhaps because of the self-selection." Between a third and half of the students continued their volunteer work beyond the end of the quarter.

But bringing service learning to a lecture was certainly extra work. Hodge and Pate had to use the existing exercises and activities for the rest of the class while reallocating the time that students in service learning would devote to volunteer activities. Both agree that having a teaching assistant in the department specifically designated to coordinate service learning with other course materials was a big plus; they credit Sarah Hilbert, the service learning TA, for much of the success of their experiment.

"There was a lot of coordination," Hodge said. "Sarah would devote 20 minutes in each section meeting to talking about the volunteer experience, about what students were getting out of it. And to most students, it never seemed as if there was enough time to discuss their experiences."

With a teaching assistant handling the logistics, the volunteer experience seemed well integrated with the class, Hodge reported. Pate and Hodge found that as the class discussion shifted from topic to topic, another group of students whose agency focused on that issue would provide the class with good illustrations of that topic; others had volunteer experience that tracked well with the entire quarter's curriculum.

Integration of community service into courses is supported by the Carlson Center, which works with faculty to identify sites whose work is highly relevant to the course and the instructor's goals for student learning. The center also shares information with faculty regarding instructional methods in service learning that fit the faculty member's instructional style and interests, as well as furthering faculty development by making them aware of current literature in the field of service learning.

Hodge's goals for the course were largely fulfilled. "I didn't want to send students out into the community to be 'do-gooders.' I wanted them to use the volunteer experience as a reality check, to see how complex issues such as poverty and racism are, to understand about who is affected and the different forces that come into play, and how the individual fits into the problem. We worked hard to get positions for the students where they would have a breadth of experiences. Almost all the students reported that they learned something valuable from their experiences."

Hodge thinks that Urban Geography provides a good model for how to make service learning work in a large lecture class, but he cautions that TA support was essential in making the arrangement successful. "Our service learning TA handled all the logistics, which was a real advantage. It also helped that the student coordinator hired by the Carlson Center was Jenifer Gager, a geography major." Gager's understanding of the discipline was important in identifying the most relevant and challenging service learning opportunities for geography.

The use of the service learning model was important not just for geography majors but for nonmajors as well, Hodge said. " It gives students an opportunity to think about their role as citizens on a global scale and down to individual action."

Professor Gunter Krumme has found ways to connect economic geography and service learning through the use of the Internet and World Wide Web. In Krumme's class, Introduction to Economic Geography, the goal is to "understand the economic components of how we organize ourselves--and to understand the repercussions of economic activity in terms of regional economics, spatial differentiation, and access problems," Krumme said.

The Internet represents a good way of studying many of these issues, Krumme found, because there is much interest among geographers in telecommunications, especially since in some cases it may be a substitute for transportation. Information processes themselves are assuming new and important roles in urban economies, an area in which Krumme has conducted research.

Krumme has expanded his introductory course to include a service learning option, in which students have worked with a social service agency to expand that agency's information capabilities, principally through the Internet and World Wide Web. One important source of placements has been with agencies that are part of the Seattle Community Network, a free, public community electronic information network run by volunteers, which is located on the World Wide Web for a variety of community activities and services. Students have ended up working with services such as the MOST (Making the Most of Out of School Time) Initiative, which provides information to public school students and their parents about activities available to them after school. Other service learning assignments were with schools or in working with senior citizens who want to gain access to electronic information.

Krumme describes himself as a "nontechnical individual" who continued to use an Apple IIe, a 1980s-vintage computer, well into 1995. "But I saw the pedagogical potential of the Web and began setting up my classes in a way that utilized Web pages. Now I have all the introductory material on the Web. The Web provides access to a diverse set of resources and experiences that may not be readily available elsewhere."

Krumme's experience with the Web and service learning makes him consider more broadly the impact of electronic information on education. "The biggest facet is the potential of breaking down barriers, of making us rethink the constraints we have worked within. Why do classrooms need walls? Why are there walls around the university? Why is a five credit class taught every day? Our boundaries are affected by tools such as the Web. It is much easier to bring the classroom to the community, and vice versa. This is directly related to the goals of service learning."

Technological changes themselves provide opportunities for lively discussion in Krumme's classes. Does technology serve to minimize or to exacerbate economic differences in society? For the economically deprived, access to information is important. Historically, that has meant physical access to things like a newspaper, or hearing about things from friends or people you meet in a shelter. Equal access to electronic information potentially can reduce inequality in other areas.

As people have experience with service learning, its impact continues to grow. This spring, Geography 280, the Geography of Health, will have a service learning option, largely due to conversations involving David Abernathy and Val Pate, both graduate students. Johnson-Bogart of the Carlson Center observes that several other graduate students in Geography have been involved in service learning as TAs, "and this experience has influenced all of them in their thinking about their professional goals."

Also this spring, Associate Professor Nicholas Chrisman will be using the service learning model to assist the Seattle Public Schools in mapping the areas of greatest need for its summer reduced-fee lunch program.

Professor Lucy Jarosz, who was one of the first faculty members in Geography to offer service learning, has not only rethought the content of her classes dealing with hunger and poverty, she also has refocused her research. Whereas formerly she focused on issues of agrarian change and food security in sub-Saharan Africa, she now has shifted to broader questions concerning the geography of food and the processes and places which surround its production, processing, distribution and consumption--an approach that is more comparative and international in exploring the relationship among poverty, hunger, and agrarian change. Professor Victoria Lawson, winner of the 1996 Distinguished Teaching Award, has recognized the role that service learning has played in her teaching.

Department chair Hodge sees a promising future for role of service learning. "I see one of our goals as educating good citizens. We're making students critical thinkers, not sponges and not do-gooders. Service learning provides an interesting opportunity to heal what is often a struggle between passion and critical thinking."

The Carlson Center has provided support for service learning initiatives in a number of departments, including communication, political science, English, landscape architecture, sociology, and has worked with faculty in chemistry and mathematics. Over several years the Center has developed strong partnerships with nearly 100 organizations in the community which now have a thorough understanding of service learning and how it differs from simply volunteering. Staff in these agencies have become co-educators, designing projects for students that are challenging and contribute both to the agency's goals and curricular goals.

The Carlson Center is interested in working with other departments and programs that are in terested in integrating service learning in their curricula. Please call the Center at 3-2618 or email to: leader@u.washington.edu

Bob Roseth, News and Information