Hello everyone! I thought I would paste an article eloquently written by Katie Langer about our service learning projects at the Blaine Campus. Please be sure to take a look!
As of the 2009 fall quarter, all Globe University/Minnesota School of Business students now experience service-learning during their required Strategies for Success course. Service-learning was developed to enhance our students’ education, sense of social responsibility, and their marketability as job candidates by providing hands-on learning that engages them in their communities.
We wanted to know how service-learning is really being implemented, so we talked with Lisa Houle, student success lead instructor, about what service-learning looks like at the MSB–Blaine campus.
Houle says she developed an “Operation Do Something” theme for the service-learning component to empower students to educate their peers about social issues pertaining to their program of study. She grouped her students by similar programs and assigned them to find a project that related to all of their individual programs as closely as possible. Houle’s Strategies for Success classes will soon host an education fair at the Blaine campus, where each group designs and hosts a booth to educate visitors about their project topic.
Each group consists of a director who manages the whole team, a marketing lead who oversees advertising and designs the booth, a research and development lead who gathers information for and creates hand-outs for the booth about the topic, and a community outreach lead who makes connections with community organizations for any needed research-based information.
One group of Medical Assistant and Healthcare Management students are developing a project to investigate and compare the costs of eating well and staying healthy to the costs of eating fast food. Comparisons include the cost of an annual YMCA membership to the amount of money an average college student spends on fast food each year. The students are also preparing trivia questions related to their topic and will present tips for eating well and staying healthy on a budget at the fair.
Another group, made up of Business students who are all interested in the non-profit sector, decided to focus on the Toys for Tots organization. The students are arranging to have a toy drop-off site at the education fair, which the marketing lead is responsible for promoting. The students will research and provide information about who the organization impacts and how children are selected to receive the donated toys.
One group made up of students in varying programs, including Criminal Justice and Business Management/Music Business emphasis, faced a significant challenge to find a project common to their programs. The students succeeded in showcasing Teen Challenge, an organization that helps teens and adults gain freedom from chemical addictions. The Criminal Justice students are focusing on providing information about the implications of drug and alcohol addictions, while the music business emphasis students are researching how getting involved in music can be a healthy distraction from drugs and alcohol.
Houle says service-learning has been well-received by her students. “The love it,” she says. “They like having a lot of control over their projects, they’re empowered, and they’re learning to take responsibility for their decisions—an important skill for the real-world.”
