Establishing a Microbiology Honors Tract to Engage Health Science Majors in Service-Learning Activities
Abstract
A
dual service-learning/honors program has been established for Microbiology students at Queensborough Community College (QCC). This program allows students enrolled in any section of this multi-section four-credit course to participate in service-learning, although all course instructors are not required to be service-learning practitioners. Qualified students are selected for activities and paired with a faculty mentor based on mutual interests and availability. Activities are designed to serve the needs of a community partner while enhancing students’ learning of their course material. Community partners include middle and high school students, the local Alley Pond Environmental Center, and fellow QCC Microbiology students. To earn the servicelearning and honors credit, students must fulfill 10 hours of direct service and maintain a reflective journal documenting their experiences. Under the guidance of a faculty mentor, students also prepare review materials, design workshops about the microbial world, and generate quizzes and interactive lessons. To date, all student participants have provided positive feedback: They have stated, for example, that their participation greatly enhanced their understanding of course materials and helped them to improve their writing and oral communication skills. They also noted or demonstrated personal growth, a sense of deep satisfaction from helping others, and increased self-confidence as a result of their service-learning experience. Feedback from community partners has also been positive, and all look forward to continuing this established relationship with QCC Microbiology students. In the future, the author will seek to expand servicelearning activities by including opportunities for non-honors Microbiology students to participate and by establishing connections with additional community partners.
Introduction
Service-learning is an important component of the teaching and learning process at Queensborough Community College (QCC). Since 2006, QCC service-learning projects have been incorporated into a wide array of subjects, including mathematics, basic skills, foreign language, art, health, and the sciences. To date, more than 40 faculty members and more than 2,000 students have participated in service-learning activities at QCC (Ellerton, Cuomo and Tarafdar). Service-learning is aligned with the college’s mission to: “foster opportunities for meaningful collaboration, promote social and intellectual growth, and enhance the individual’s learning experience.” QCC has identified service-learning as one of eight high-impact learning experiences intended to improve retention and graduation rates. As such, it has become an integral part of the college’s Freshman Academies, which launched in Fall 2009. Freshman Academies offer comprehensive academic guidance and other support services for all full-time students. Recently, QCC has established an online Service-Learning Resource Center that provides faculty, students, and community partners with background information, curriculum ideas, and other valuable resources. In this supportive atmosphere, a growing number of faculty members are incorporating service-learning into their classes and engaging students in meaningful activities designed to enhance their 30
learning while serving a community need. QCC and other colleges incorporate service-learning opportunities into science courses in many different ways. Often, the service is embedded into the course curriculum, and the entire class participates in the activity; Successful completion of the project and/or the submission of a reflective journal or other material is considered as part of the student’s grade (Larios-Sanz, Simmons and Bagnall). In other instances, QCC offers service-learning activities as a way for students to earn additional college credits or extra credit within a course, or as a way to replace a poor test grade or assignment. Honors programs, meanwhile, sometimes use servicelearning to challenge students and enrich their experiences (Suchman, Deines and Hurd). In the examples listed above, instructors typically produce their own syllabus and have the autonomy to decide how to integrate service-learning into their course curriculum. However for faculty who are interested in becoming service-learning practitioners, many challenges exist, including: • How to handle multi-section courses that do not have service-learning embedded into the course curriculum. In such instances, all instructors often follow a common syllabus, and they are not permitted to offer extra credit or grade replacement in only one or a few section(s).
Key words Service-Learning, Microbiology, Peer Tutoring, Biology Honors, Science Education This work is adapted from a presentation of the same name given by Joan Petersen at the New York Metro Area Partnership for ServiceLearning (NYMAPS) Third Annual Symposium on March 23, 2011.
For faculty who are interested in becoming servicelearning practitioners many challenges exist.