Service Learning Through Community Engagement

This book addresses the impact of a variety of service-learning arrangements on local communities and focuses on the experiences, both positive and negative, of the community organization. Integrating theoretical, historical, ethical, and practical frameworks, the book examines in depth such emerging models as global service learning, social entrepreneurship, and experiential philanthropy (EP). Understanding the historical rationale for campus-community partnership is critical for determining the future of community engagement. The engaged campus plays an important role in both maintaining and promoting civil society and fostering civic engagement among emerging adults. A growing body of research demonstrates that community-engaged learning opportunities involving authentic grant making can deepen students’ understanding of philanthropy’s role in our society and extend its benefits to the community. Colleges and universities have been offering EP courses since the late 1990s. The Students4Giving program provides a framework for philanthropic education emphasizing community-based knowledge with both grant making and fundraising dimensions. A growing body of research on the impact of EP courses has identified a variety of positive student learning outcomes. Community engagement is a dynamic multifacilitated, multistakeholder endeavor that makes impact measurements allusive. The book discusses the role of critical service learning as a backdrop for ethical engagement and aims to graft existing professional frameworks and theory as tools for guiding and reflecting practice in community engagement with the aim of minimizing ethics violations in the community. Community engagement presents a difficult duality; many students will participate in it to develop professional skills particularly within education, social work, and health professions.