Abstract
During a Televised Speech in 2009, President Obama urged Congress to support the Kennedy Serve America Act that expanded Ameri-Corps programs. He told young Americans, “… if you are willing to volunteer in your neighborhood or give back to your community or serve your country, we will make sure that you can afford a higher education.” AmeriCorps programs have resulted in more opportunities for students to be a part of the national service movement while going to college. Student affairs educators working in the fields of campus-community engagement have seen how such programs help the community and how they provide an opportunity for low-income college students to define their civic identity. Beyond financial assistance, both publicly and privately funded community service scholarship programs may provide less tangible benefits such as a more welcoming cocurricular learning environment, informal professional mentors, and peer connections to students from a similar socioeconomic background.
Often low-income students, whose demographic includes a high percentage of first-generation students and students of color, feel less welcome on college campuses and have more trouble “connecting” to a campus community than other students. Paul Thayer explains that these students “are faced with leaving a certain world in which they fit for an uncertain world where they already know they do not fit in” (p. 5). For low-income students, community service scholarship programs can provide a chance to be involved in campus-coordinated volunteerism that connects them back to their community of origin or one like it. When these programs aim specifically to engage low-income students, they offer a peer group composed of students from a similar socioeconomic background as well as one that is like-minded about community engagement. Connections to these peers can combat some of the isolation that this population of students may experience in college, while creating a space to engage in experiential learning in a familiar and comfortable environment.
Program Structure and Funding
The University Of Wisconsin-MilWAUKEE ENGAGES students in community service scholarship programs that are either funded privately or through AmeriCorps. The Midwest Campus Compact Citizen (M3C) Scholar Program through AmeriCorps allows first-generation and Pell Grant—eligible students to engage in a year of service and leadership development, priming them to be engaged, active citizens. Students complete 300 hours of community service at local nonprofit agencies in tandem with coursework in leadership development and service reflection. At the end of their service and leadership education, students earn a $1,100 AmeriCorps Award.
Student Learning and Connection: Benefits beyond the Dollar
After Two Or Three Years Of EngagING STUDENTS through the M3C Scholar Program or a similar privately funded community service scholarship program, we realized that these programs had the potential to increase student retention more effectively than traditional efforts that encourage low-income students to assimilate to the traditional college-student experience in order to succeed (living in the residence halls, attending athletic events, joining a fraternity or sorority). They offer an alternative way of engaging low-income and first-generation students in experiential learning that is more relevant to their personal history. In fact, students involved in these programs commented that they found a sense of campus community within the service experience, professional mentors at their community service sites, learning opportunities in their field of study, and a comfort in connecting with their home community or one that is similar.
In 2010, I completed a study of a community service scholarship program which demonstrated that it not only encouraged a sense of community, but also supported student learning and development for students from low-income backgrounds. Specifically, their civic identity was fueled by four outcomes of their experience: (1) developing relationships with community mentors and other low-income students, (2) recognizing their ability to make a positive impact on their community as a result of the long-term exposure to a particular agency or issue, (3) discovering a pathway to career discernment and confidence, and (4) understanding complex social issues at a deeper level.
One student suggested that her work with a teacher who became a mentor provided her with more confidence in her decision to pursue a career teaching urban youth. She explained:
… well, I have a good bond with the kindergarten teacher. She always tells me, “I know this might be crazy sometimes but it's so worth working with the little kids.” She tells me everything that's happened, like her experiences with working with kids. … I think she probably helps me the most because she always explains what I am supposed to be doing and just always tells me how she deals with certain situations … it makes me feel like, okay well I can do this then. (p. 114)
Best Practices
In Order To Realize Such Benefits, community service scholarship programs should be designed to treat students as individuals by connecting the potential for experiential learning at the service site with the participant's passion for particular community/social justice issues. Since the advent of such programs is fairly recent, existing programs can offer best practices for campuses in the early stages of building a community service scholarship program. Designing a successful program translates into student success, campus connection, and meaningful learning. Here are a few suggestions:
Limit eligibility to low-income and first-generation students and require them to take a leadership development course together. This allows for a peer group of fellow students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds to form, directs resources to a population most in need, and provides community agencies with volunteers who are often more savvy about issues of poverty, social services, and urban/low-income youth. In our program, students explained that the relationships they developed with other low-income peers and with nonprofit workers were ones they otherwise struggled to form prior to the program. Low-income and first-generation students are easy to identify on any campus through a partnership with the Financial Aid Office, since both items are captured when students fill out the annual FAFSA application.
Make sure students are placed at sites with strong professional mentors who will build a relationship with them, offer meaningful experiential learning, and serve as role models and references beyond the term of service. When talking with students after their year of service in the program, a reoccurring theme in the conversations emerged relating to the amount of time, support, and general interest the site supervisors show in their academic and professional success.
Find out what students are passionate about in terms of community issues. Yearlong AmeriCorps placements are an opportunity for students to find out if they want to be a teacher, a curator at an art museum, or a leader of environmentally-friendly outdoor expeditions for kids. Therefore, it is critical to build relationships with an array of community partners at local schools, environmental organizations, food pantries, shelters, cultural centers, and museums. These sites may be the only opportunity students have to be deeply exposed to the professional setting of their intended major.
Be sure to engage students in leadership development and service reflection. Once students have found a placement and begun their service, it is important that campuses engage them in leadership development education that includes the opportunity for reflection on the service experience. This can be as informal as monthly group lunch meetings with the campus scholarship coordinator or as formal as a required credit-bearing class. At UW-Milwaukee, we require scholarship recipients to take a class through the School of Education on civic engagement and group dynamics that, when coupled with the service requirement, helps them to form a citizen identity. The course includes an overnight leadership retreat for teambuilding and networking by way of ropes courses, leader reflection, and personality inventories. For the rest of the semester back on campus, the curriculum includes topics such as the ethical challenges of leadership, a comparative study of leadership theories and models, and readings and projects on community organizing.
Offer incentives for meeting intermediate milestones in the program. For many low-income students, completing 300 hours of service and leadership development is difficult because of other life obligations such as work and family. Publicly acknowledging students as they hit an intermediate hour mark is critical to their motivation and success, and forces those who are lagging behind to think about their own commitment to the program.
Provide students with a public forum to present what they learned about the social issues their agency addresses, leadership styles and beliefs, and their own personal development. At UW-Milwaukee, the “Presentations of Engagement and Learning” Banquet highlights over 100 students in various community service scholarship programs who display trifold boards that reflect what they learned related to their own civic identity, leadership, and social justice issues through artifacts, photographs, quotes, personal journal entries, and other items.
Conclusion
IN A 2003 ABOUT CAMPUS ARTICLE, Brian Fitzgerald outlines the struggle that low-income students and their families face when financing a college degree. Even a scholarship in the amount of as little as $1,000 can increase student retention between 13 and 89 percent, depending on the year in school, according to Darin Wohlgemuth, Don Whalen, and Julia Sullivan. So the inclusion of national service programs as a form of engagement is significant for low-income students, especially those who come with an interest in pursuing a degree that will lead them into the helping professions. What participants actually gain in offsetting college costs is actually quite small; however, they enjoy the even greater benefits of a community of like-minded peers from a similar socioeconomic background, informal community networks and connections, and a “niche” on campus where they feel comfortable.