American Democracy Project

Service Learning at UTM, Spring 2005

Below are the highlights of 10 current or recent projects with 17 instructors involved.

Jenna Wright, Tim Hacker, Margrethe Ahlschwede, Alison Caldwell, Jenna Wright, Anna Clark and Leslie LaChance, English
English 425 (and other classes)
Students respond to Fulton County High School English portfolio pieces. [Tim Hacker leads this project for UTM’s English Department]

Donna Cooper Graves, History
History 302
For quite a few years now, I take my students in HST 302, Introduction to Public History, to help the Carroll County Historical Society with processing county records for their genealogical library at the Gordon Browning Museum in McKenzie. The students learn about archival processing, and the library gets volunteer help with their work. We usually go there for three weeks and spend about 2-3 hours each time.

Jerald Ogg, Communications
Communications 326
I have always had a part of my Principles of Public Relations course (COMM 326) in which I require the students to work in groups (usually of four or five) to craft a rudimentary public relations campaign for an area non-profit organization. It counts as 20% of the grade, and the organization must receive at least one usable product (brochure, advertisement, planned event, etc.) at the end. It has been very successful over the years...last fall, after Christin Hayes worked with the local Red Cross as part of her project, she actually began a student Red Cross chapter. Hopefully the project instills a public service orientation; it also gives them a taste of "real world" non-profit PR, an area that has a lot of jobs.

Mike McCullough, Management
Mgmt 710

Martin
Groups 1 and 3 Held Golf Tournament in South Fulton on April 2, 2005 with proceeds going to St. Judes ($775 raised)

Group 2 Organized a group of elementary students who wrote cards to over 100 senior citizens in retirement home, and high school students to read to elementary students at the Martin library

Group 4 Collected over 500 toys for La Bonheur

Memphis
Group 5 Wrote grants to raise $24,000 to save youth newspaper that has been successful for years but is now in jeopardy

Group 6 Collected nearly 400 pounds of food for the Memphis Mid-south Food Pantry

Knoxville
Group 7 Assisted the Big Brothers and Big Sisters organization of Knox, Blount and Anderson Counties in an effort to increase organizational structure and effectiveness

Group 8 Assisted YWCA to market and plan strategy for their domestic violence assistance program

Jackson
Group 9 Collected 569 Teddy Bears for the Carl Perkins Center to Prevent Child Abuse in Jackson

Group 10 Assisted Haywood County Habitat for Humanity in improving their website and other organizational needs

Bill Zachry
University Scholars Seminar (2001)
Students and professor created a new Service Learning Course

Course goals:
1. Become familiar with the history, theory and ethics of community service in the United States.
2. Explore the motives and experiences of people who commit to community service or who avoid such activities.
3. Provide 2-3 hours per week of community service during the semester.
4. Integrate the academic study and service experience, so that the practice of community involvement becomes grounded in an understanding of the larger context of citizenship


Linda Ramsey, Physical Education
Adaptive Physical Education
Class helps with Special Olympics each year.

Crystal Whitlow, Educational Studies
Freshman Studies
As a remove-an-absence option students can read text books onto tape for Sharon Elementary School students.

Susan Buckelew, Psychology
In the Clinical Psych class, students spend one morning at Baptist hospital on the Behavioral Medicine unit. They function as observers and write a paper about the experience. In the Abnormal Child Psychology class, UTM students volunteer to assist children and youth with special needs in special education, resource, or CDC class rooms at either Obion County High school or Lake Road elementary school one morning. A paper is also required. For extra credit, they may volunteer to help "children in need" and may earn up to 10 points of extra credit for each hour served. They are responsible for locating their own sites. These sites included Boys and Girl Club, special education classrooms, and Pathways. Last year, I offered a field work course. Students volunteered 9 hours weekly at a mental health inpatient facility (Baptist Hospital, Pathways in Jackson, TN). Supervision was provided on site by staff. We also met weekly as a
class to learn/discuss issues related to ethics, interview techniques, and observational skills.

Margrethe Ahlschwede, English
English 112, Fall 2004.

The idea came from what I read of Educating Citizens. During the semester everyone had to carry out an act of civic or moral responsibility, write about what they did and why and then make a brief presentation (4 minutes each, we did this during the last two class periods) to the class. Fascinating what happened. At first, I don't think some students got it, hadn't read the syllabus enough, or, had skimmed and thought that anything they'd done in the past would cover it (volunteering over summer in a nursing home, etc.).
No, it had to be an act taken sometime between the Morris Dees talk and the Peace Prize winner's talk.

Two students worked on the Habitat house; one student began recycling the stuff from her suite at Martin Place, and wrote the manager about the need for Martin Place to make recycling easier there. Two athletes wrote about how they read aloud at the Martin Primary School and in their writing, tied that to how they had learned about generosity as part of their growing up.

The decision to require students to carry out an act of civic or moral responsibility, write about it, and then tell the class about it, was one of the best decisions I ever made for students. Will do it again in the fall (different theme, and of course no Peace Prize winner speaking).

Paula Gale, Soil Science
Each semester I have one of my classes present a soils program for elementary school kids.