For Community's Sake


New! Click here to read the conference report.

Also, see links to the flip chart notes for each of the breakout sessions below.

For Community's Sake: Maximizing the Community Impact of Service Learning

June 6th, 2008, 8:30-4:30
University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County


The Goal: A draft plan to maximize the community impact of service learning in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

This gathering will focus on maximizing the community impact of service learning. While our focus is on Wisconsin, the knowledge we intend to build will be relevant to anyone doing service learning anywhere. Our focus will be on the community, not the classroom, and the community resident, not the student. We will have a paper exchange and will create space for some formal presentations, but we are de-emphasizing the usual conference presentation format in place of a more participatory process. We will have two sets of participatory knowledge building sessions where people will come together to collectively develop knowledge around specific questions related to the community impact of service learning. Each of the participatory knowledge building sessions will then bring the ideas they generate to a drafting session at the end of the day.

This will be a different kind of gathering, designed to collectively shed light on the long-neglected community side of service learning.


How can you help:

1. facilitators: do you have experience with community impact of service learning and the skills to draw out the expertise around you? We need eight of you to facilitate participatory knowledge building sessions. The best facilitators are those who don't think they already have the answers and want to find them.

2. expert sessions: do you have a specific experience you would like to share with others? We are inviting people to offer sessions to be held during an extended lunch break. We will use sign up sheets that day to assign rooms for large groups and suggest informal spaces for smaller groups.

Our draft schedule:

8:30--light breakfast and networking, sign-up to lead/attend open sessions.

9:00-10:00--rotating keynotes:

Judith Rosario, Urban League of Greater Madison/Centro Hispano of Dane County, "Service Learning: The Community Perspective"

Marie Sandy, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, "Community Voices: A California Campus Compact Study on Partnerships"

10:10-11:40: participatory knowledge building sessions focusing on community impact

1. How do we design projects with community impacts in mind? see the flipchart notes
2. How do we build relationships with community groups and organizations? see the flipchart notes
3. How do we balance and negotiate campus and community needs? see the flipchart notes
4. How do we design service learning programs for maximum community impact? see the flipchart notes

11:50--12:20: pick up box lunch

12:20--1:20: expert sessions

1:30-3:00: participatory knowledge building sessions focusing on community impact

5. How do we support community organizations to fully partner in service learning? see the flipchart notes
6. How do we document community impact? see the flipchart notes
7. How do we build community capacity through service learning? see the flipchart notes
8. How do we restructure higher education to support service learning that maximizes community impact? see the flipchart notes

3:10-4:30: drafting a report on maximizing community impact see the summary notes

4:30: celebrate our accomplishment and adjourn

Co-sponsored by University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Rural Sociology, The University of Wisconsin College of Letters and Science Office of Service Learning and Community Based Research, and Wisconsin Campus Compact