JANUARY | ISSUE 01 | WINTER QUARTER 2020
COMMUNITY of ENGAGED FACULTY SEATTLE UNIVERSITY
About the newsletter TABLE OF CONTENTS
This quarterly newsletter has been created for the Community of Engaged Faculty at Seattle University. Here you will find
Fellowships, pg. 1 Engaged Colleagues, pg. 2 Conferences & Events, pg. 9
information about conferences and events, content from engaged colleagues, and fellowship opportunities. Each issue is meant to provide meaningful resources while encouraging readers to grow connections with the greater Seattle
Student Fellowships, pg. 10
community.
Publications, pg. 11
We invite everyone to live the meaning of Ignatian Leadership. Reflection and critical assessment of our work is necessary in sustaining authentic partnerships which allow us to build relationships with members of our community, and provide a holistic learning experience for both students and instructors. Enjoy!
Recruiting: Community Engaged Justice Fellows
Dr. Holly Ferraro
University community engagement frequently raises thorny issues relating to power, privilege, and reciprocity. Community-based research, engagement, and service-learning challenges us to form authentic relationships with communities, and faculty may feel ill-prepared to navigate cultural differences and power dynamics. Additionally, faculty research agendas and the demands of the academy can sometimes conflict with the cultivation and sustainment of truly reciprocal relationships. Service-learning, which is intended to benefit communities while enhancing student learning may lead to concerns about students doing more harm in the community than good. In response to these concerns, the Community Engaged Justice Fellowship program provides an opportunity for a small cohort of faculty to explore more effective, authentic, and ethical community engagement. Facilitated by Dr. Audrey Hudgins, and Dr. Holly Ferraro, this 6-part seminar will enable faculty to:
Dr. Audrey Hudgins
Apply here!
Seminar Dates February 6 February 13 March 12
April 9 May 7 May 21
Understand how their own identities come into play in their community-engagement work Develop more ethical practices for working with communities in order to better amplify community voice Evaluate their own community-engagement work using a critical lens Develop skills for better preparing students to work in communities Practice managing critical conversations in the classroom Develop a concrete action plan for incorporating seminar themes into their community-engagement work The seminar, which carries a $500 stipend, will meet six Thursday evenings over winter and spring quarters from 5:30pm-8:00pm.
For more information, please contact: eseymour@seattleu.edu
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Community and the Classroom: Pedagogies in Service-Learning Dr. Hilary Hawley, Senior Instructor, English Dr. Hilary Hawley has used service-learning in her UCOR 1100 academic writing seminar, "The Rhetoric of Sustainable Food," since 2008. The course shapes students’ learning through 18 hours of community-focused experiences over one quarter. As a result of her experiences with nonprofit organizations and the relationships she has developed with organization staff members, this course has evolved from an inspection of the relationship between food and the environment into a course which deeply examines food security and food justice. Dr. Hawley argues that a food system cannot be sustainable without food security. Over the years, Dr. Hawley has developed partnerships with several community organizations: Community Lunch on Capitol Hill, The Danny Woo Garden in the ChinatownInternational District, the Cathedral Kitchen at St. James, Chicken Soup Brigade with Lifelong, and The Food Bank at St. Mary’s in the Central District.
organization whose goals align well with course objectives approaches Seattle U. For example, Clean Greens Farm & Market, which grows and delivers fresh produce at affordable prices, operates a farm in Duvall and farm stand in the Central District. Engaging Seattle U students in farm and farmstand work helps free up the leaders of the organization to focus on their larger ideas and visions, while providing students an inside look at how one organization is approaching issues of food justice. Dr. Hawley explains, “Part of integrating service-learning is building the course so that the hands-on experience guides students through the learning goals, while simultaneously responding to the needs of the community everyweek.”
Working with a small cohort of partners keeps communication manageable and enables Dr. Hawley to stay up to date on each organization's work. A small number of partners also allows for flexibility when an
Hilary Hawley, PhD English Literature
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From her experiences with community partners, Dr. Hawley has learned that service-learning has the largest impact when it is consistent, long-term, and aids open communication. Without these components, it would be impossible to receive and implement feedback, allowing for the possibility of the service work to be detrimental to the community people are trying to serve. Building a good relationship with community partners can give them a chance to express their ideas more openly.
For example, several years ago amidst safety recalls on spinach and other greens, the St. James Cathedral Kitchen decided to explore growing their own lettuce. Dr. Hawley put Director Teddi Callahan in touch with Dr. Philip Thompson, a faculty member who specializes in Civic and Environmental Engineering. After speaking with Dr. Thompson and Dr. Hawley, Teddi was able to present a request and receive enough funding from various donors to start their project to install a hydroponic system. Since building the system, the Cathedral Kitchen has been able to provide year-round fresh lettuce for guests.
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Anticipating changes in needs is also part of building a good relationship. Danny Woo Garden is always taking on different projects, such as building storage sheds, a chicken coop, and a cob oven. They’ve expressed need for students who have specific skills such as gardening or building experience, as well as students with fluency in the language shared by the gardeners.
"Rethink your syllabus. Throw out texts. Throw out assignments. Rebuild others. This is how service becomes meaningful for faculty members and meaningful for students." Dr. Hawley mentions how the Community Engaged Justice Fellows Program helped her learn how to respond to these kinds of shifts. “It helped me think about how to be intentional about approaching the community, how to reinvigorate my relationship with community partners, thinking of ways to meet with them and see where their needs are, and making sure we’re still helpful.” Among these considerations, meeting students where they are and guiding them along their education is necessary. Dr. Hawley recalls needing to think deeply about how to enable students to make deeper connections in their learning and make changes that benefit their growth.
“Students often don’t know they’ve been signed up for service-learning in their first fall quarter. But most students who are attracted to Seattle University and its mission have a desire to be part of the community. There is an expectation that this is what we are supposed to be doing. We have the resources to get connected. It’s been an overwhelmingly positive experience with students.”
"There’s power in sharing in the classroom. I don’t have the same experiences when they go out and I don’t. They bring back valuable knowledge that I don’t have yet."
We’ve had a great chance to see what people are doing in the community. Students are able to write about it. They’re able to write better papers because they come well informed with first-hand experience on how these issues are manifesting within the community. They tell me things I don’t know, and how organizations are doing their work and responding to change. They fill me in. I try to go and serve with them at least once a quarter. I’ve had less time in the past after the birth of my child. This year I have more time, so I’m excited.”
As a long-time educator, community member, and service-learning advocate, Dr. Hawley has been able to build meaningful relationships with her community partners and provide exceptional learning experiences for her students.
“The humanities, literature, writing, and reading are all made more meaningful when we see the relationship between what we’re reading and thinking and writing about and the impacts on the world.”
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Getting Started with Service Learning Dr. Stephen Luckey, Assistant Professor, Biology What are you currently teaching?
Stephen Luckey, PhD
Biology
“I’m teaching a biology course called Therapeutics of Disease. It’s an upper level course. It’s an elective for students, and the focus of the course is centered around how to treat diseases with medicine. Most students who take it are generally interested in the health professions. They want to become either a doctor, a physician assistant, or somewhere in a healthcare area. Or, they’re trying to decide if they even want to become any of those things. It’s one of the only courses in the Biology department that focuses on disease and management.”
What interested you in Service Learning? “I was interested in service-learning because we talk about patients in class, but I wanted students to go out and see what patients look like in the world. Service-learning seemed like a logical extension of the course. It would complement the course, because we can focus on health disparities. We don’t really talk about the ethics behind it, but we focus in on what evidence out there talks about health disparities. It made a lot of sense to have students working with community organizations who are trying to provide some kind of healthcare to the people they serve."
Which organizations do your students work with? “Lifelong, Hilltop, L’Arche, and Full Life. These are place-based activities, so the students basically go in and help the partners provide service to the community. This year, I have a handful of students who are already working with an organization. When they do that, I usually don’t ask them to serve with an organization that we pre-determined. I’m pretty flexible. My goal is that the organization has at least some healthcare focus. It’s pretty broadly defined right now."
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How long have you been offering service-learning courses? "This is my third quarter. Every quarter I always say I could do a little bit of a better job, and absolutely, I can. I ended up doing the Service-Learning Fellows Program with Kristi Lee. It’s a program that’s offered for a year with other faculty through the Center for Community Engagement (CCE). That was really helpful. I did another CCE program called the Community Engaged Justice Fellows (see page 1). It was critical discussions around service-learning. Are we really doing good? Do we just have some patriarchal role? What is the critical role of service-learning going into communities? It was really helpful discussions from my perspective to learn about service-learning. We’re not just going in and saving people. We’re not always helping. Service-Learning fellows was more nuts and bolts, which was really helpful for me. I have been teaching for many years and it was a little daunting thinking about putting service-learning in the classroom. I can teach biology, but I lack the confidence to discuss social issues. Some of those discussions were helpful in those two fellows programs."
What challenges have you faced with organizing the course? There are always some students that see this as a heavier requirement on them. I recognize that it’s two hours of their study time. I try to take this into consideration when I plan the course. The challenge is the students who are working two jobs. They have busy schedules, and are fitting in something that they don’t have flexibility with. With service-learning, you’re quite beholden to the times that are offered by the organization. That’s a challenge for the students I work with. Some of the commuter students have completely booked Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedules. So I’ve had to be flexible in terms of the organizations they’re working with outside of the ones offered through CCE. The students are generally really engaged and I’ve been happy about that."
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Have these experiences shaped how you approach your courses? “Really made you think about service-learning. I don’t think it changed how I do anything in the classroom but I’m much more aware of things. I do ask the students “Do you feel that you’re helping? Are you really helping the people you’re providing service to?” Ideally service-learning would be a two way street where everyone is benefiting from the experience. I try to have those conversations as much as I can. I can teach biology, but I lack the confidence to discuss social issues. Some of those discussions were helpful in those two fellows programs. In the classroom, I have some discussions. I probably need to do more, and I think it comes with confidence in my ability to facilitate those discussions. The more I learn about health disparities, and the more I learn about community partners and service-learning, I feel more confident. I feel more confident than I did the first year, so I want to keep having those experiences.
How have students reacted to service-learning and in-class discussions? "I was really happy and surprised. I think, overall, students like it. Some students have said they are taking the course because there’s not a lot of service-learning in biology, so I think they appreciated that. Seeing the students and how critical they are, and how reflective they’ve been is pretty remarkable. I ask them to be very critical about the service-learning. Are they really doing anything? What are they seeing? What are the benefits, and challenges? Think about what are the social institutions that might put somebody in the case of needing to be served. I try to bring up health disparities associated with race, gender, sex and sexual orientation. I try to bring those topics into the classroom as much as possible, but some of it I’m not as confident discussing. As I get more comfortable, I want to be talking more about those issues. A lot of these students are going into a health profession, so I would like them to be thinking about these issues. They’re going to see patients, transgender patients, patients that come from all different backgrounds. Being culturally competent is what I would like to get out of this course with the service-learning aspect in it. We can talk about science, but the other parts are really important discussions to have as they learn about how to treat patients.
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Do you have any advice for faculty who are interested in service-learning and community engagement? "I think the CCE is a great start. I wasn’t quite sure how to do it, but the CCE was really helpful. I don’t know how I would have done it without their help. What I haven’t been able to do is find community partners, so the CCE was really helpful in setting up those relationships for me. It definitely made the development process a lot easier. Those programs, the fellows, to have those conversations… Those were really helpful for me, a biology, non-humanities person. They’re late nights sometimes, they’re added onto the workload. They provide financial resources, which is nice. The majority of students haven’t complained about service-learning. We try to make it work with the students’ schedules. I think the resources at the CCE are really important."
"There is certainly a yearning for service-learning at this university. I think that’s really cool to hear and to see."
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Campus Compact's 2020 National Conference This year, Compact20 will be hosted at the Hyatt Regency Seattle in Seattle, WA from March 29 - April 1, 2020.
Register Here Compact20 is the largest and most inclusive national conference focused on the role of higher education in building democracy and healthy communities. Sessions explore topics such as civic engagement, community-engaged research, civic- and servicelearning, institutional change, college-community partnerships, and more. Compact20 provides professional development and networking opportunities for community engagement professionals, engaged faculty, community partners, student civic leaders, and campus senior leaders.
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Campus Compact is now accepting nominations for the 2020-2021 Newman Civic Fellowship The Newman Civic Fellowship is a yearlong program that recognizes and supports community-committed students at Campus Compact member institutions. The fellowship is named for the late Frank Newman, one of Campus Compact’s founders and a tireless advocate for civic engagement in higher education. In the spirit of Dr. Newman’s leadership, the fellowship provides student leaders with training and resources that nurture their assets and passions to help them develop strategies for social change. Campus Compact member presidents and chancellors may each nominate one student from his or her institution for the fellowship. The fellowship runs for a full academic year and provides students with access to learning opportunities focused on building the skills students need to serve as effective agents of change in addressing public problems and in building equitable communities. For more information about the Newman Civic Fellowship, click here. Learn more about nominating a student fellow here. Nominations will be accepted through the end of the day on Monday, February 3, 2020.
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Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning: Summer 2019 Issue is now available to read MJCSL is an open-access journal focusing on research, theory, pedagogy, and other matters related to academic service-learning, campus-community partnerships, and engaged/public scholarship in higher education.
View Volume 25, Issue 2 (2019) of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning via this link. Current issue(s):
“I live both lives”: Exploring Double Consciousness in ResidentStudents at an Engaged Institution Thomas A. Dahan, Kathryn Cruz, Anetha Perry, Brian Hammell, and Stephen Danley
Optimizing Service-Learning for Self-Efficacy and Learner Empowerment Joanna Gonsalves, Eric Y. Metchik, Cynthia Lynch, Charlotte N. Belezos, and Paula Richards
Investigating the Overlapping Experiences and Impacts of ServiceLearning: Juxtaposing Perspectives of Students, Faculty, and Community Partners Lorrie George-Paschal, Amy Hawkins, and Lesley Graybeal
Participatory Orientation in GSL Research to Hear the Community: Who and How Matters Nora Pillard Reynolds
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Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning: Call for Proposals The Winter 2021 issue of the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning (MJCSL) will be a joint issue with the National Center for Institutional Diversity (NCID), University of Michigan. As the publisher of MJCSL, the Ginsberg Center is partnering with NCID to highlight the challenges and successes involved as scholars have made efforts to center social justice in their community engagement. This special issue will be guest edited by Tabbye Chavous (University of Michigan) and Tania D. Mitchell (University of Minnesota).
The deadline to submit a proposal for the Winter 2021 Special Issue is February 15th, 2020. This issue will highlight how scholars have centered social justice when designing and implementing service-learning opportunities or producing and applying engaged scholarship. The editors invite abstracts for submissions from educators and researchers from all fields and disciplines that: Report research on the challenges, motivations, and experiences of practicing community engagement Explore the often-overlooked contributions to the field of community engaged-scholarship by educators, researchers, practitioners, community partners, and community members from historically marginalized backgrounds Evaluate methodologies for the practice and research of engagement based on their ability to achieve social justice Apply the lessons of critical theoretical and methodological lenses such as post-colonial theory, feminism, critical race theory, queer theory, disability studies, and ecocriticism, to advance community engagement pedagogies and practices. Click here to Review Submission Guidelines. Proposals are accepted on a rolling basis. Proposals for general issues of MJCSL will continue to be accepted. However, the Winter 2021 issue will include only manuscripts that conform to the above criteria for the special issue on "Centering Social Justice in the Scholarship of Community Engagement."
View full details here
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If you have any questions, contact mjcsl@umich.edu.