Academic Service-Learning (ASL) Fellows

Syllabi & Action Research Projects

College of Arts & Sciences

Sonia Barrios Tinoco

Modern Language and Literature

College of Arts and Sciences

Action Reserach Project: The Academic Service Learning Experience in Latin America Literature Classroom

Hilary Hawley

College of Arts & Sciences

Action Research Project: Written Reflection as a Teachable Skill in Service-Learning Courses
Teaching any course is a process of continuous reflection and improvement. Building a service-learning component into that course can be an even greater challenge, even with the extraordinary support for the practice on this campus and especially with the assistance of the Center for Service and Community Engagement (CSCE). Over the past three years, I have taught my introductory college writing course, centered on the theme of food and sustainability, as a service-learning course. Students provide much-needed hours for a food justice organization that may be working with a very limited budget, while gathering experience that they can bring back to inform our classroom conversations and inspire their research and writing tasks. As described by Seattle University’s Center for Service and Community Engagement, and as practiced in this course, “Service-learning helps prepare [students] for a lifetime of civic engagement and leadership. In addition, service-learning is an important learning tool that allows [them] to apply the concepts, theories and other material covered in class. The community becomes a text for the class and is as critical to ‘read’ as other textbooks.” Reading that “text,” however, can be a challenge for students, especially the fall-quarter freshmen who are frequently enrolled in my course.

College of Education

Charisse Cowan Pitre

College of Education

Action Research Project: Serving the Community by Illuminating Civil Rights Stories: Empowering Students on the Margins and Increasing Cultural Competence of Teacher Candidates
Abstract: Academic service learning is well established in the MIT Program. Under the direction of Professor Jeffrey Anderson, a nationally recognized expert in the field of academic service learning, the MIT program has successfully implemented service learning into the teacher education program for the last two decades. Therefore, the focus of this action research project was a case study of one academic service learning experience in the MIT Program to help a novice service learning faculty member understand the process new teachers experience in their attempt to conceptualize ASL in a way that is meaningful and easily transferrable to practice in their first years in the classroom. At the time of the project, there was a shift in the structure of service learning component of the program. As a result, more MIT faculty were responsible for maintaining this signature component of the program. This action research project provided an opportunity for one of the new lead faculty members in the service learning component of the program to gain first-hand knowledge and insights related to teacher candidates’ service learning experiences.

Kristi Lee
College of Education
Action Research Project: Using Service Learning in a Graduate Level Foundational Course