Disciplinary Pathways to Service Learning

Business and Management

Ours is a combined "story" as to how we became involved with service-learning/volunteer experience. The original idea came from a roundtable discussion among all of our business and management faculty, who asked whether a volunteer component could be added to our program curriculum. The consensus was: Why not try!

As the department chair, I assumed the responsibility of writing a Campus Compact grant; we received $3,000 to proceed from an idea to implementation of a credit Supervised Volunteer Experience class. The Campus Compact grant provided us with the "seed" money we needed to develop, implement, promote and pay a faculty salary during the start up stage. We also received encouragement and strong support from our administrative staff as well as our own business and management advisory committee members. Together we did it! Norm Kilgore was the natural person to coordinate our students' experience of giving back to the community. His personal pathway follows:

I came to be involved with service-learning almost by accident. The business department of Spokane Community College was brainstorming various ways to help our graduates better integrate into the business community. Businesses expect their employees, especially managers, to have an involvement in the community as part of their corporate citizenship goals. Out of our work came first the concept of required Community Service (which was scrapped because of its negative connotations) and then the concept of Supervised Volunteer Experience.

My involvement stemmed from several things in my background: (1) I had 34 years of industry experience prior to joining the SCC faculty; (2) I was currently coordinating the department's Cooperative Education endeavors, and (3) I was, and still am, adjunct faculty and therefore had the time to create and launch our program.

I also have a long history as a corporate volunteer for the Boy Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, United Way, and Little League baseball, as well as a huge amount of volunteer work for my church--which incidentally resulted in a papal medal for me, a medal of which I am very proud.

To make community service available to all of our business students, the Supervised Volunteer Experience was added to our core curriculum for general business, marketing and management students. It is also available to all students on campus, regardless of their discipline. Two area senior colleges, one public and one private, agreed they would accept the credits as valid transfer elective credits, since both schools are involved in encouraging students to volunteer in the community.

Our service-learning is not curriculum based. Rather, it is founded on a concept that we all have an obligation to give back to our community--that we can't go on being "takers." When Dr. Terrence Brown became CEO of the Community Colleges of Spokane in 1987, his inaugural address to the faculty and staff included his wish that "every student who graduates from our colleges could give 40 hours of service back to the community." In part, the efforts of the business department are helping to make that wish come true.

In the department we found that we could be creative and work well as a team as we designed the class; it has given us a "commonality" which we have enjoyed. Supervised Volunteer Experience in the Business and Management Department has these key features:

• Variable credit is awarded for hours of approved supervised experience (33 hours equals 1 credit up to a maximum of 3 credits).
• The grade is pass/fail to avoid grade inflation.
• All business and management students are required to earn 1 credit; any student on campus, however, may enroll.
• The class is designated "open enrollment" so students may enroll even though the quarter is in process.
• The faculty salary is based upon a formula so that the class is literally a "go" if even only one student enrolls.
• The volunteer experience is documented with credits and grade earned on the student transcript.
• Under our funding system, the class generates FTE revenues for the college.
• It's a win/win situation for the student, the college, and the community.

We have learned that we are one of only a few business departments in the country to have a service-learning/volunteer component within our curriculum. We are very pleased and gratified to have had the opportunity to offer it to our students.

As Norm and I have become more and more involved, we have deepened our commitment to the benefits derived when our students contribute back to our local community. Our desire is that students become so engrossed that they make volunteering a long-term, regular activity in their lives.

Disciplinary connections

Our students are allowed great flexibility when selecting the site at which they will do their volunteer experience. Some choose non-profit or governmental agencies because they think the experience will be fun as well as benefiting the community. For example, students have chosen to walk dogs at our local humane society because they love animals; others have chosen to be part of community centers because there is a great need for volunteers to work with children.

Others have chosen the site to help them make decisions regarding their own career goals. One student thought she would enjoy working with elementary school children, so she chose to volunteer as a teacher's aide in an elementary school; she became so excited about education that she wanted to pursue a teaching degree. However, realizing that she needed to help support her family, she accepted a paid teacher's aide position when an opening occurred.

Other students have chosen sites for specific business work experience. If a student is unsure which area of business to enter (because the field is so broad), we encourage the students to begin to focus on business areas which match their interests, skills and goals. One male student volunteered at the Girl Scouts assuming office management responsibilities; this background served him well when he graduated and entered the work force. One student who had been home raising children with no actual business work experience volunteered at Hospice where she received excellent recommendations because of her newfound computer and bookkeeping skills. She was able to transfer those skills to a paid position when she left Spokane Community College.

As our volunteer experience class has evolved, we are also encouraging students who have no business work experience or little current business work experience to select a site where they can gain marketable experience. Our local community has many educational institutions out in the business community vying for internship, cooperative education, and service-learning/volunteer sites. Most business organizations either cannot afford or are not willing to pay every student who needs current work experience. However, we find that business organizations are very receptive to using student volunteer help.

Students sometimes receive bonuses after having completed their volunteer work; these bonuses are offers to stay within the non-profit or governmental agency in paid positions. Those kinds of offers are definitely motivating and confidence-building for the student, as well as great public relations for our department and college.

All of our Supervised Volunteer Experience students do reflection as part of the exit interview conducted by our coordinator, Norm Kilgore. The students learn much about themselves after the experience and become much more aware of some of the problems facing our local community. With the coordinator's help they try to develop solutions.

In an informal Spokane business community telephone survey regarding the importance of including volunteer experience on job applicant resumes, I learned the following:

Some companies in Spokane definitely want their employees to do volunteer work (once employed) because it is good public relations for the organization--and gets their company's name out into the community.

Volunteer experience on a rsum provides a picture of the job applicant--commitment, inner growth and high initiative--traits desired by organizations.

Some interviewers are asking behavioral-situation questions, and volunteer experience can provide examples to answer those questions.

One human resource person stated that his particular organization doesn't care if the job applicant has paid or unpaid (volunteer) experience as long as it is experience that can benefit the company.

Practical considerations

Presently Spokane Community College does not have a campus volunteer center. During the last school year the college established a task force that worked on vision and mission statements for experiential learning, including service-learning/volunteer experience. The college structure for experiential learning includes an administrator, a campus-wide faculty coordinator, classified staff personnel, and individual department/division coordinators who oversee the broad based experiential learning.

Within our current structure, our Supervised Volunteer Experience class stands alone. Our budget and support staff fall within the Business and Hospitality Careers Division, specifically in the Department of Business & Management.

For accountability purposes, Norm Kilgore has developed the following forms to provide the audit trail for students before the Pass/Fail grade is assigned:

Supervised Volunteer Experience Request

Course Syllabus

Volunteer Experience Learning Agreement

Volunteer Experience Student Evaluation

Volunteer Experience Agency Evaluation

Volunteer Experience Assessment

For copies of these forms please contact Norm Kilgore at (509) 533-7347 or FAX at (509) 533-8059. Feel free to contact him if you have questions regarding procedures. If he should be unavailable, please contact Sharon Niblock at (509) 533-7342.

We are fortunate to have a good working relationship with our non-profit and governmental agencies, due in part to our coordinator making at least one site visit every quarter and phone contacts when needed. Obviously, good communication is a key to the success of our program.

Practical considerations from the coordinator's viewpoint:

• Logistics of instructional strategy: We have no campus volunteer center as yet. All of the linking takes place one-on-one with the coordinator and student.
• Evaluation: Still considered work in progress. The exit interview reflection form has been revised several times and will probably continue to be revised as new concerns arise.
• Community contact: Initially, a letter was sent to some 60 hand-selected non-profit agencies that appeared to be able to benefit from unskilled volunteer help (unskilled in terms of knowing in advance what the agency does). Skilled students are placed more intentionally; for example, if a student has computer skills an effort is made to place them with an agency that has office needs. Also, the coordinator had a chance to speak to a group of agency volunteer leaders. This helped spread the word. Additionally, our college has sponsored an agency fair the last two years. The coordinator personally talks with every agency representative. Community reception has been marvelous. Other agencies are now calling in and writing to get on our list of places.
• Site selection: Service-learning assignments are made partially on the basis of students' interests and partially on the coordinator's desire to give them a broad exposure to the community. If someone has been volunteering for his or her church, this is not an acceptable assignment for our program. The need here is to get the students into new environments which stretch their comfort zones. New environments are more stimulating. Students are informed up front that whatever their assignment is, it has to be a "match"--that is, they have to be satisfied, the agency has to be satisfied, and the coordinator has to be satisfied. Lacking any one part, a new site is selected. Students also have to make an appointment and go through an interview at their proposed placement site.

To the future:

In August, 1996, Spokane Community College learned that we have received an AmeriCorps grant through Washington State Campus Compact. The following goals of our grant will expand our experiential learning opportunities for students--specifically volunteer and service-learning.

• We hope to create a 1-credit service-learning class for liberal arts students. The component can be added to a specific liberal arts class; e.g., Sociology. Students enrolled in Sociology for 5 credits have the option to register for the 1-credit class and gain service-learning experience in the community.
• Professional/Technical students will have the option of enrolling in Supervised Volunteer Experience.
• All students participating in our service-learning or Supervised Volunteer Experience classes will be given a certificate for documentation purposes used particularly when going for job interviews.
• A data base will be set up to track employers, agencies, students, hours worked, etc.
• An advisory committee will be established made up of local agencies, faculty, students.

We have learned that here is no one right way to introduce students to service-learning/volunteer experiences. Start with an idea that fits your college and its students; get started; seek grants or funding; constantly evaluate; let what you've started evolve. You will be glad that you took the time and energy to help your students discover service-learning/volunteer experiences. It's a win/win situation for students, for colleges, for the community.

		Local Stories Local Style: Service-Learning and Composition
		Service-Learning: Theory and Rationale
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