Committed to Changing the Culture
Information about sites and projects
Planning a course with Service Learning requirements
Planning a CBPR project with Bonner
Answers to concerns about Service Learning
Information about sites and projects (LINK)
Bonner offers an alternate history tour of Greensboro that intertwines current community sites and their importance in a historical and geographical context. During the tour we visit neighborhoods, meet community leaders and partners and introduce notable places from Greensboro’s rich history. Notable periods include Colonial, Civil War, Reconstruction and New South, Civil Rights and newcomers immigration.
Bonner staff, staff and project coordinators
Planning a course with Service Learning requirements (LINK)
An essential problem faculty members encounter designing for experiential learning is contact with people and resources beyond familiar academic stomping grounds. As an educator, you might feel confined by working conditions, the scope of your field, personal interests or comfort level. Bonner facilitates specific types of experiential learning through the lens of Service Learning. It can help you through its many contacts with marginalized communities and grassroots organizations rarely represented in the academic world.
Planning scholarly and CBPR projects with Bonner (LINK) (Illustration)
If faculty members do not have ready associations and relationships with local communities then the connection of Service Learning to research might appear farfetched. But it is a natural progression for learners already in the field, already working intimately with underserved or marginalized communities. Students are drawn to community engaged scholarship (CES) or community based participatory research (CBPR) often with direct application (eg, translational research) in mind to improve community programs or events or to effect policy change.
Bonner believes the strongest CES and CBPR projects are built on Service Learning since all three involve deep trust and relationships.
Answers to concerns about Service Learning
Some faculty concerns about Service Learning are reflected in their thoughts and ideas about changing general education requirements to include courses with community engagement and off-campus learning components.
It goes against parents’ wishes who are more interested in their children’s future employability.
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Community engagement courses don’t attract students.
Many things do and don't attract students but as High Impact Practices used at Bonner (Service Learning, Diversity/Global Learning, Learning Communities, Service Learning/Community-Based Learning, Undergraduate Research), they have a powerful affect in retaining them.
Such courses, under all circumstances, should “do no harm” to Greensboro’s communities.
Normal text.
But widespread adoption of them could cause damage by large numbers of untrained students, unprepared faculty and administration unable to provide logistical help.
Normal text.
Forcing faculty to go down this path is unethical, with or without a requirement that courses have community partners.
Normal text.
The emphasis on localism ignores topics of the global South and non-Western peoples. But should a localist theme be pursued it should be within the context of US history.
Normal text.
Information about sites and projects
Planning a course with Service Learning requirements
Planning a CBPR project with Bonner
Answers to concerns about Service Learning
Information about sites and projects (LINK)
Bonner offers an alternate history tour of Greensboro that intertwines current community sites and their importance in a historical and geographical context. During the tour we visit neighborhoods, meet community leaders and partners and introduce notable places from Greensboro’s rich history. Notable periods include Colonial, Civil War, Reconstruction and New South, Civil Rights and newcomers immigration.
Bonner staff, staff and project coordinators
Planning a course with Service Learning requirements (LINK)
An essential problem faculty members encounter designing for experiential learning is contact with people and resources beyond familiar academic stomping grounds. As an educator, you might feel confined by working conditions, the scope of your field, personal interests or comfort level. Bonner facilitates specific types of experiential learning through the lens of Service Learning. It can help you through its many contacts with marginalized communities and grassroots organizations rarely represented in the academic world.
Planning scholarly and CBPR projects with Bonner (LINK) (Illustration)
If faculty members do not have ready associations and relationships with local communities then the connection of Service Learning to research might appear farfetched. But it is a natural progression for learners already in the field, already working intimately with underserved or marginalized communities. Students are drawn to community engaged scholarship (CES) or community based participatory research (CBPR) often with direct application (eg, translational research) in mind to improve community programs or events or to effect policy change.
Bonner believes the strongest CES and CBPR projects are built on Service Learning since all three involve deep trust and relationships.
Answers to concerns about Service Learning
Some faculty concerns about Service Learning are reflected in their thoughts and ideas about changing general education requirements to include courses with community engagement and off-campus learning components.
Faculty members are being forced by the College to work beyond or against their professional interests. The College lacks respect for their subject matter expertise and pedagogical skill.
Normal text.
It drives an unnecessary wedge between powerful tenured faculty and untenured members.
Faculty are not a uniform body, but are made up of groups with different interests and power to influence campus decisions. Generational differences influenced by familiarity with diversity and social awareness are separate faculty (Next Generation Engagement Project, NERCHE)
The College should not force faculty to connect unlike topics and issues such as art and antiracism if they don’t see such a connection, nor should the College push students’ learning experiences towards a particular discipline like SOAN.
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The College’s insistence has the potential to hurt the reputation of faculty members in the eyes of students because they are being forced to teach in ways that go against students’ interests.
Normal text.
Normal text.
Community engagement courses don’t attract students.
Many things do and don't attract students but as High Impact Practices used at Bonner (Service Learning, Diversity/Global Learning, Learning Communities, Service Learning/Community-Based Learning, Undergraduate Research), they have a powerful affect in retaining them.
Such courses, under all circumstances, should “do no harm” to Greensboro’s communities.
Normal text.
But widespread adoption of them could cause damage by large numbers of untrained students, unprepared faculty and administration unable to provide logistical help.
Normal text.
Forcing faculty to go down this path is unethical, with or without a requirement that courses have community partners.
Normal text.
The emphasis on localism ignores topics of the global South and non-Western peoples. But should a localist theme be pursued it should be within the context of US history.
Normal text.
