A TWO-YEAR INTENSIVE SERVICE LEARNING PROGRAM:

EDUCATION FOR CITIZENSHIP IN A DIVERSE DEMOCRACY

THE UMASS CITIZEN SCHOLARS PROGRAM

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A CITIZEN IN A DEMOCRACY?

1. PLEASE TAKE THREE MINUTES TO OUTLINE SOME OF THE FEATURES OF CITIZENSHIP IN A DEMOCRACY ON THE NOTE CARDS AT YOUR TABLES. WE ASSUME THAT YOUR DEFINITIONS OF “CITIZENSHIP” AND “DEMOCRACY” WILL BE IMPLICIT IN YOUR LIST.

2. PLEASE TAKE TWO MINUTES TO SHARE YOUR CONCEPTIONS WITH THE PERSON SITTING NEXT TO YOU.

WE WILL RETURN TO THESE IDEAS DURING THE OPEN DISCUSSION PERIOD

1. THE ORIGINS AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE CSP AT UMASS

2. THE FEATURES OF THE CURRENT PROGRAM

3. COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP

4. OUTCOMES ( A WORK IN PROGRESS)

FOR STUDENTS

FOR FACULTY

FOR THE COMMUNITY

FOR THE UNIVERSITY

4. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

5. DIALOGUE

Q& A ABOUT THE CSP

SHARING STORIES FROM YOUR OWN INSTITUTIONS

BRAINSTORMING - OVERCOMING OBSTACLES AND BUILDING INTENSIVE CSL PROGRAMS

THE CSP WAS CONCIEVED :

•To address the disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality of our public, land grant university (re: community engagement).

•To address the disconnect between community service and work for social change.

•As an antidote for the artificiality of the 14 week term and the frustration that often accompanies short term service learning projects which deny students the opportunity to address real issues over a meaningful time span or which prevent students from observing the consequences of their service.

•To help students develop an understanding of democracy and its workings.

•To help students develop the skills necessary to be an effective citizen within a democratic society.

•To change the culture of the campus.

THE CSP WAS CONCIEVED IN THE SPRING OF 1998. APPLICATIONS FOR THE FIRST CLASS OF SCHOLARS WERE SOLICITED IN THE SPRING OF 1999 AND THE FIRST CLASS BEGAN IN THE FALL OF 1999.

•To create an intimate community and support network of civic minded students within a large potentially alienating campus.

• To create a safe environment for the exploration and expression of idealism.

• To provide financial support to those students who cannot do intensive service because of the need to work.

•To promote a cross disciplinary dialogue about citizenship and service.

THE CSP OFFERS AN ENVIRONMENT FOR STUDENTS TO THINK CRITICALLY ABOUT SOCIETAL ISSUES AND TO ACT CREATIVELY TO PRODUCE CHANGE.

CITIZEN SCHOLARS DEVELOP THE COMMITMENT, COMPETENCE, AND EXPERIENCE NECESSARY TO BECOME COMMUNITY LEADERS AND AGENTS OF CHANGE - CITIZENS WHO CAN SUCCESSFULLY ADDRESS COMMUNITY PROBLEMS AND ADVOCATE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE.

1. Program is based in The Commonwealth Honors College. Open to 20 students/year by application. (Minimum requirements - 3.2 cum. GPA, history of community service, professed interest in the program, faculty recommendation).

2. Curriculum-(to be completed in four semesters- one course per term in sequence).

5 courses (4 required, 1 elective)

60 hours community service/term required

Annual retreat

Immersion experience (internship or ASB strongly encouraged)

3. Scholarship

$1000/ year for two years

Up to $2500 to support a summer internship

4. Rituals - Induction ceremony concurrent with the UMass distinguished Citizen Scholar Award

5. Rituals- Citizen scholar’s medal awarded at graduation

6. Community partnerships with long-term mutual involvement with CSP

7. Community instructors

CSP students are encouraged to acquire a variety of service experiences during their two years in the program. These should ideally include:

• Direct service - “traditional” community service, ideally in a partner agency (e.g. mentoring/tutoring in the schools or preparing food in a soup kitchen).

• Service Administration - working closely with the administrator of a community organization to learn how such organizations are managed. Often results from student returning to the site of their direct service for a second or third term, in which they are given greater responsibilities.

• Immersion Service - long-term and or intensive service in which student work s full time with the organization. Typically fulfilled through curricular Alternative Spring Break or summer internships.

• Policy Work, Political Mobilization or Applied Research- undertaking work which assists the community organization in effecting structural change.

HOW DO STUDENTS CHOOSE THEIR SERVICE?

COMMUNITY PARTNERS: Students may make their own community service arrangements but are strongly encouraged to do at least 30 hours/term with one of the 7 established community partners. These partners work closely with the program to design meaningful service experiences and guarantee that students will receive good supervision and mentoring. Community partners also serve as community instructors in CSP classes and assist in the design of capstone projects.

BREADTH OR DEPTH? Students are encouraged to explore a number of service options during their first year in the program and to focus their efforts on a specific sector of service in the second. However, because students must begin designing their capstone project during the summer between their first and second year in the program, there is a certain advantage to picking a focus sooner rather than later. Students who choose to work within a single agency during the program find that they are quickly given greater responsibilities and consequently learn considerably more. Agencies are willing to invest more in students who are likely to spend extended time in the agency. The capstone project encourages students and agency supervisors to develop a mutually beneficial partnership.

Our Community Partners:

1) Big Brothers Big Sisters of Hampshire County - intensive individual youth mentoring.

2) Twenty-first Century Community Learning Centers - staffing of after school program at the Amherst Middle School and Ware Middle School.

3) Amherst Survival Center - staff support and community building in a multi-service center offering assistance with food, clothing, furniture and social services.

4) Amherst Middle School Mentoring Program - after school group mentoring on the UMass campus for youth at risk.

5) Food Bank of Western Massachusetts - grant writing, program development, community education.

6) Nueva Esperanza - a multi-service agency in Holyoke, MA working in housing development, grassroots economic development and community health and youth services.. Youth mentoring and construction support.

7) From “You Can’t ” To “You Can”. A Program of the Hampshire Educational Collaborative - development and implementation of service learning projects for k-12 students with disabilities.

REQUIRED CLASSES ( in sequence).

1. THE GOOD SOCIETY (ANTHROPOLOGY 297H) : examines alternate visions of the good society. Encourages students to imagine how society could be and ought to be. Helps students clarify personal goals and values and helps expand their imagination. Explores issues that must be resolved in working for the common good.

2. TOOLS FOR CHANGE (HONORS 291S): explores the tools (both theoretical and methodological) that citizen activists use to bring about structural change. Aims to engage students’ passion for working at this level. Includes introduction to public policy, political mobilization and participatory action research.

3. ORGANIZING FOR CHANGE (HONORS 391S): students identify a social problem that can be addressed through community action. Students work in collaboration with community partners to develop a proposal for intensive community based research or for a policy initiative that will address the identified problem and effect significant change.

4. PUBLIC POLICY AND CITIZEN ACTION (EDUCATION 497H) Students implement the proposals developed in Organizing for Change.

ELECTIVE CLASS:

Students choose one additional community service learning class from the list of more than 60 offered in the Five College Consortium. Students are encouraged to elect an immersion course such as Curricular Alternative Spring Break or Summer Internship. A CSL course elected prior to acceptance into the program may be used to fulfill this requirement.

Meg Joseph’s Service Experience

Scott Bellner’s Service Experience

Meghan

Hamilton’s

Service

Experience

•Students create an effective learning community that transcends the conventional boundaries of the time, space or major.

•CSP Creates a safe environment for students to explore and act on their idealism.

•Emphasis on action helps students overcome the sloth of institutional culture.

•Students engage in holistic experiential learning which enables them to overcome the atomizing forces of the standard curriculum.

• Students learn to translate thought/theory into action.

•Students learn to live with the uncertainty, ambiguity and sloppiness that often accompany work in the “real world”. Community service and capstone projects help wean students from their expectation of immediate gratification.

•Students learn to think in terms of long term processes - social change work does not necessarily produce immediate payoffs.

•Long-term contact with CSP faculty positions students to ask questions they would not be likely to ask in the traditional classroom.

CSP Students

•Develop specific leadership skills (many are leaders in other campus organizations).

•Believe that the work that they do matters. Believe in their ability to change the world.

•Develop critical reflective skills

•Develop a complex understanding of the role of service in social change. Are aware of the different kinds of service on the service-justice continuum.

• Develop a political and social analysis to explain poverty and injustice.

•Are committed to future civic engagement.

•Leave with concrete knowledge of how to effect structural change.

REALIZATIONS:

•Commitment to service does not mean commitment to change. Students often lack a political or social analysis that would lead them to look for and address the root causes of social problems. Students often lack a fundamental understanding of democracy and how it works.

• Students at UMass do not have much experience in developing large-scale projects and consequently need a lot of coaching and supervision to design and implement useful capstone projects.

•Our commitment to interdisciplinary, campus-wide work can create a tension between our professional faculty interests and our department’s curricular or disciplinary interests. THIS HAS MADE RECRUITMENT OF ADDITONAL CSP FACULTY A CHALLENGE.

BENEFITS:

•Allows us to develop a deeper relationship with our students.

•More fun! This is some of the most exciting teaching that we have ever done.

•CSP enables us to address the disconnect between our roles as teachers, scholars and citizens. Encourages us to be active in our own communities.

•Gives us a classroom filled with mostly idealistic and motivated students.

•Makes us better teachers.

•Creates a forum for transcending the bounds of disciplinary discourse and the impetus to do so.

•Helps us to link theory to practice (in pedagogy and in our profession).

•Moves our campus CSL activity along the continuum from placement to partnership. CSP partners engage in mutual agenda setting to define, understand and address our specific needs.

•Community educates faculty on what community needs - e.g. our partners want fewer “volunteers” who will work longer hours with at least a two semester commitment.

•Members of the community bring their expertise to the classroom in their role as community instructors further validating their own experiences.

•CSP helps us to revitalize the land grant mission of UMass.

•Students provide thousands of hours of community service fulfilling critical needs. Long-term CSP service provides a more knowledgeable and more reliable volunteer than the typical service placement.

•Capstone projects provide research and policy work that saves organizations resources.

•Community partners learn about the University and how it works.

•CSP creates openings to discuss how other University resources might be brought to bear on solving pressing community problems.

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• Contributes to the fulfillment of our mission as a land grant school.

• Contributes to fulfillment of the mission of Commonwealth College to serve the Commonwealth.

• Helps counter the culture of apathy and cynicism that is all too prevalent on campus.

• Creates additional visibility for campus outreach work.

• Sets the bar higher for other CSL courses on campus.

• Contributes to the cohort of student leaders on campus

1. Comprehensive integration of service curriculum over several terms allows for greater depth and breadth of exploration. Long term associations often enable students to see the results of the work they began, enhancing their belief in their ability to effect change.

2. Working in a cohort (4 common courses) across four semesters creates a supportive learning community in which students have the ability and the desire to support each other’s work.

3. Multi-term service with a single community partner allows for greater depth of experience, allows student to assume greater responsibility, and allows agency to get more out of student volunteers. Overall experience is more satisfying for all stakeholders.

4. Program is neither a major nor a minor but draws from majors from across the campus. Program is truly interdisciplinary. Students bring expertise and perspectives from their own discipline and are required to explain them to others while reconciling their disciplinary approaches with those previously unfamiliar to them. Students claim that this challenging work outside of their major opens them up to thinking a lot more critically and to problematizing the world with considerably more complexity.

5. Students receive a small stipend which diminishes the need to engage in wage labor and creates more freedom and flexibility to pursue service learning.

ISSUES WE CONTINUE TO CONFRONT:

•Students need more nurturing, guidance and instruction, especially in the planning of capstone courses.

•Students desire an open/democratic classroom in which they can take charge of their own learning. BUT, they frequently come to the program lacking the skills or background in democratic process necessary to make this happen.

•Time constraints. CSP students tend to be involved in many activities and are frequently over-committed. Democratic learning is not efficient and requires more, not less contact time.

• Mediating the depth vs. breadth of service.

•Mediating student choice in service vs.. enforced work with our partners.

•Mediating the need for short term systematic evaluation with the realization that our goals are long-term.

ISSUES WE CONTINUE TO CONFRONT

•Recruiting more faculty to teach and advise in CSP when we lack the ability to provide extra compensation.

•Recruiting constituents (those served by community organizations and agencies) to represent themselves at stakeholder discussions.

•Attracting a more diverse student body (specifically more men and more students of color). Most of our community partners have explicitly requested more volunteers of color.

•How can we build on CSP success to create new, quality CSL opportunities on our campus?

• How do we put the CSP on a sustainable funding basis when it is in conflict with the dominant reward system of the research university?

FORUM

The Menu

1. What would you like to know about the program that we have not told you?

2. Do you see in the CSP preparation for citizenship in a democracy as you defined it in your opening exercise?p

3. Do you have stories from your own institution re: education for citizenship that you would like to share?

4. Can you help us brainstorm on how we might address some of the challenges that we still face?

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A CITIZEN IN A DEMOCRACY?

RESULTS FROM THE CITIZEN SCHOLARS PROGRAM WINTER RETREAT-January 2002

CITIZENS IN A DIVERSE DEMOCRACY ARE:informed* responsible* flexible* empowered*

involved/engaged/ active* open minded flexible empathetic

cooperative inquisitive inclusive free

willing to listen open to change honest critical thinkers

willing to dissent concerned open and receptive

committed to action

able and willing to support positive leadership

aware of the need for politics in daily life

working with other people toward a goal

doing for others as well as for selves

CITIZENS IN A DIVERSE DEMOCRACY HAVE:

a sense of community* freedom of speech, lifestyle, thought, expression

liberty a voice

a sense of the past the ability to communicate

a sense of connection to others respect for difference