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Undergraduate research as community service.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Service learning has not yet gained wide acceptance at research universities. Here we present a model of combining research and service learning at an urban research institution. The Community Based Research Institute is an interdisciplinary summer academic experience in which undergraduate students and community partners collaborate to meet a community-defined research need.

Introduction

The use of service learning is growing on college campuses, but at research institutions the challenge of incorporating service learning into the undergraduate curriculum remains formidable. The faculty reward structure reflects a commitment to research more than to undergraduate teaching in general, much less a potentially time-intensive pedagogy such as service learning. Although there are individual faculty members and even some departments which recognize the value of service learning for undergraduates, we lack models of engaging undergraduates in research that addresses community issues; models that are transferable and accessible to a wide range of faculty members across the university. The evaluation study reported here documents an interdisciplinary partnership created to engage undergraduates in meaningful and needed community service with non-profit organizations, connected to an academic course, and designed to strengthen students' research skills.

Background

At The University of California, Los Angeles, despite a long history of community involvement, the ways in which faculty, staff and students are engaged in the community are not always closely connected to academic coursework, particularly at the undergraduate level. Increased interest in making this connection between community service and academic learning for undergraduates necessitates that we understand how such a pedagogy works best within the culture of public research institutions. To this end, we engaged in an evaluation of a new Community-Based Research Institute offered to undergraduates during the summer of 2002. This paper describes the Institute and offers insight into how students, faculty, staff and community partners feel that research-as-service-learning can provide a high-quality learning experience for students while meeting a community need.

Research has produced consistent evidence that there is set of conditions under which service learning is most likely to impact student learning. Three national studies (Astin, Vogelgesang, Ikeda & Yee, 2000; Eyler & Giles, 1999; Gray et al., 1999), and numerous other studies have concurred that reflection activities are critical to learning from service. Faculty members tend to find they need to make clear connections between academic course material and the service experience for students. (Astin et al., 2000). Also contributing to high quality service-learning experiences are relevant training, appropriate supervision, service that is of longer duration--over 20 hours per academic quarter or semester (Gray et. al., 1999), and meaningful service placements (Eyler & Giles, 1999; Gray et al., 1999). There is also evidence about what makes a strong relationship between institutions and communities. The importance to community partners...

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