Service learning, touted for getting students in touch with real world

Montana State University English student Lance Novak was pretty nervous about talking about
short stories with 90-year-old ladies at a Bozeman retirement home, but it helped him
understand literary criticism better.

By GAIL SCHONTZLER Chronicle Staff Writer

"Overall, it makes (learning) more active, which in turn makes it more exciting," Novak said.

Across the nation, more and more college students are participating in "service learning,"
which means going out into the real world and applying what they’re learning, either by
teaching or helping solve problems.

For example, mechanical engineering students helped devise a wheelchair that would help
people with disabilities stand up and reach something on a shelf, said Irene Fisher, longtime
community service director at the University of Utah.

"You can read about social problems in a sociology textbook," Fisher said, but when a student
is standing three feet away from a homeless family, with a pregnant wife, two kids and nothing
to eat but a loaf of bread, "it takes on new meaning."

"It’s a powerful kind of learning," Fisher said.

Service learning is more than community volunteerism — it means incorporating service into
education, said Dean McGovern. Executive director of the Missoula-based Montana Campus
Compact, McGovern spoke at Monday’s service-learning conference at MSU, attended by about
35 students, professors and local non-profit agency directors.

MSU President Geoff Gamble said the Bozeman campus is a little late getting into the game,
but "the possibilities here are incredible."

The movement started around 1985 when U.S. campuses were criticized for focusing too much
on training students for careers and too little on educating citizens for democracy, McGovern
said. The Campus Compact idea has grown dramatically since then.

In Montana, one computer instructor started a multimedia project to help the Blackfeet tribe
save its language by making CDs and videos of native speakers, McGovern said.

Using federal grant dollars, the Montana Campus Compact awards $3,000 to about eight
professors a year to create service learning programs. About 10 fellowships are awarded to
students who come up with good ideas, offering students $842 for their projects and $737
towards tuition.

At MSU, associate English professor Marvin Lansverk has his students discuss great books with
eighth-graders at Chief Joseph Middle School and mythology with Irving Elementary students.

"For me, the benefit was having to explain and simplify what I was learning," said MSU student
Emily Barrett.

Kathy Tanner, MSU Office of Community Involvement director, said each year 3,000 to 4,000
MSU students do some volunteer work outside of class, but MSU has only a handful of
service-learning classes. She said her goal is to establish a serving-learning center at MSU.

Gail Schontzler is at [email protected].

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