There is ample evidence to suggest that the future well being of the nation’s communities will rely on engaged citizens who are skilled in civil discourse and civic decision-making, who vote, and who are concerned with providing services that sustain the life of their communities and all the individuals within those communities. Volunteers In Service To America (VISTA) members are in a unique position to support these efforts. Since 1965, over 120,000 Americans have performed national service as VISTA volunteers. VISTA places individuals with community-based agencies to help find long-term solutions to the problems caused by urban and rural poverty. Currently, over 5000 VISTA members serve at over 1000 non-profit or public agencies across the country. VISTA members are asked to work behind the scenes in community organizations to build capacity and support the development of infrastructures to address the causes of poverty in the United States.
Because of their training and experience, VISTA members are in a position to model the kind of life-long learning essential to creating well-informed citizens and professionals working to support community organizations. When asked, VISTA volunteers attest to how important and worthwhile the "service year" is in their academic and personal growth. They claim that they have gained invaluable experience working with community-based organizations to build capacity, and routinely identify these activities as having lasting effects beyond their service year.
The State of Vermont currently supports over 100 VISTA volunteers. One of the most prominent VISTA programs in Vermont is the Burlington Community and Economic Development Office (CEDO) site, which sponsors some 35 AmeriCorps*VISTA full-year volunteers each year. Data gathered over several years from this site has shown that more than one-third of all volunteers pursue graduate work after their service year. We anticipate that this level of interest in pursuing additional educational opportunities is a strong indication that there would be interest in an academic program that links VISTA members to a higher education institution such as UVM.
UVM has a rich history of supporting service-learning and other community engagement efforts. The university also has developed substantial relationships with a number of VISTA programs across the State of Vermont. A design team comprised of several UVM faculty members and VISTA program directors across the state met over a period of several months to develop a program for VISTA members that accommodated the needs of all of the stakeholders.
Although many VISTA programs provide volunteers with professional development opportunities, these educational opportunities are designed to address issues and responsibilities specific to each site. Little has been done thus far to assist VISTA members in linking their VISTA experiences to future educational and career planning.
The University of Vermont (UVM) is well suited to work directly with VISTA members and their sponsoring organizations to support ongoing educational and career planning. Land grant institutions of higher education like UVM have traditionally pursued a mission designed to ensure that communities were successful in "raising corn and cows" as a route to a sustainable economy. Today, while agricultural issues continue, the land grant mission has expanded to assure that communities are successful at creating healthy civic environments that provide a sustainable economy based on a flourishing and strong workforce.
For UVM, this means creating opportunities for students to learn about civic engagement, practice the skills of civic involvement, and link these practices with discipline-based learning. Such opportunities promise to not only bring new meaning to the study of particular disciplines, but also begin to reforge the land-grant mission, ensuring that research-based knowledge is consistently integrated into civic action and communities.
The AmeriCorps*VISTA ALIVE initiative is a program designed to draw on the resources at the University of Vermont to support the civic and professional development of A*VISTA members. Through the ALIVE Program, VISTA members are afforded opportunities to reflect on their VISTA experiences in a structured way, and allowed to obtain academic credits for this reflection in related avenues of study.
The mission of the ALIVE program is to promote reflective practice and engaged citizenship among all ALIVE partners; to advance volunteer scholar's educational and career goals; and to link university resources to communities and community resources to the university.
All A*VISTA members accepted into ALIVE receive in-state tuition rates. The tuition for the ALIVE program for the 2002-2003 academic year is $1041.00 for 3 credits. This will vary depending on the UVM tuition rate for a given academic year. Full payment will be due at the end of their year of service and A*VISTA education awards may be used. There should be no other program costs. Volunteer scholars are expected to purchase their own books/required readings, as determined by the faculty advisor.
All A*VISTAs, regardless of their request for a scholarship (see New UVM Scholarship Fund Created), are expected to provide a deposit of $125.00 within one month of registration. A*VISTA Professional Development Money may be used for this purpose (check with your VISTA Leader to determine your eligibility).
A. Goals and Accomplishments
The AmeriCorps*VISTA Academic Learning Integrated with Volunteer Experience (ALIVE) is a program designed to draw on the resources of the University of Vermont (UVM) to support the civic and professional development of VISTA members. Through ALIVE, VISTAs are afforded the opportunity to reflect on their VISTA experiences in a structured way, obtaining academic credits in the process.
The core principles for ALIVE were derived utilizing service-learning principles, and understandings about engaged citizenship and reflective practice. These principles have included: "learner-centered adult education," "modes of inquiry," "reflection," "perspective-taking," "critical thinking, problem solving and decision-making," "values, moral, and ethical considerations," and "connecting values to action."
The opportunity to forge a relationship with a faculty and community advisor has been central to the program, as has been the use of the "residency weekend" format. Over the course of the last two years, VISTAs have developed relationships with faculty from a variety of departments including: education, social work, psychology, economics, community development and applied economics, sociology, and public administration. They have also worked with community advisors from several area agencies, schools, and non-profit organizations.
We successfully completed our first year of the ALIVE program in June of 2002, "graduating" five volunteer scholars. The first cohort was provided an opportunity to engage in workshops, seminars and fellowship. We hosted two weekend residencies and a closing colloquium. Final projects for these VISTAs included: a 360 degree assessment of a AmeriCorps*VISTA's "leadership style;" results from a series of focus group meetings with African-American women regarding the accessibility of health care; in depth life histories of two women leaders; a comparative analysis of the leadership culture of two organizations; and an assessment of the capacity of a teacher education program for instituting service-learning practices.
In response to feedback from the first cohort of VISTAs, we worked to provide more structure in year two by adding monthly seminars, reducing the number of weekend residencies to one, while retaining a final full day colloquium. A seminar, entitled, "The Reflective Practitioner," was created and cross-listed in the Education, Community Development & Applied Economics and Public Administration departments. In year two, we increased enrollment to eleven volunteer scholars. We also increased the number of faculty and the number of departments working with the program. While our original goals were for cohorts of "15 to 30 scholars," we reevaluated these expectations after the first year and adjusted expectations to represent 10% of the approximately 100 AmeriCorps*VISTAs in Vermont.
B. Program Impact
All volunteer scholars have been afforded the opportunity to work with a community advisor and a faculty advisor to engage in reflective practice while earning academic credit. One volunteer scholar observed that ALIVE was "a totally new way to look at and experience education." The reflective process of the ALIVE program aids in the professional development VISTAs in a variety of ways including clarifying areas of future study and development of leadership skills. Two of the first five scholars were accepted into UVM master's programs (one deferred), one went on to a master's program at the University of Michigan, and three (including the one deffered) signed up for another year of VISTA.
There is evidence to suggest that faculty and community advisors benefited from their involvement in ALIVE as well. Last year, a faculty member cited working with an ALIVE scholar as "the highlight of her year." A community advisor observed that working with a volunteer scholar "reinvigorated her commitment to community service."
As we had intended, the ALIVE Program gave rise to the development of an interdisciplinary team of faculty that designed and continues to redesign the curriculum. ALIVE initiated cooperation between the University and area agencies, schools, and non-profit organizations. The ALIVE program continues to recruit faculty from other disciplines to advise volunteer scholars and to present at the seminars and weekend residencies. We also are increasing connections with area agencies, schools and non-profit organizations through work with community advisors.
The University's Continuing Education Office, the Student Accounts Office, and the Scholarship Office have contributed to the successful development of the ALIVE program. Continuing Education guaranteed in-state tuition rates for AmeriCorps*VISTAs and worked with us to list the various courses. Without these collaborations ALIVE would not be a success. In addition, the Community Outreach Partnerships Center (COPC) granted awards for those AmeriCorps*VISTA working within the Old North End of Burlington, VT to help offset their tuition.
C. Program Changes
Ongoing evaluation has been a central feature of the ALIVE Program. VISTA participants are periodically surveyed, process debriefings are routine features of most gatherings, and VISTA non-participants have been interviewed to determine the barriers to participation. An advisory board has continually provided feedback to ALIVE staff, supporting the recruitment process, and critiquing proposed design changes.
We have made several changes as a result of our ongoing evaluations. The format of the program was changed due to feedback from the first year cohort who struggled with the self-directed design. To provide more structure, we created a "The Reflective Practitioner" seminar for the first three academic credits.
These structural changes, combined with a growing reputation for providing a quality experience led to the recruitment of eleven AmeriCorps*VISTA scholars this fall. Our expectations concerning the number of volunteer scholars targeted to enroll in ALIVE has been modified to reflect the barriers to enrollment faced by VISTAs. The VISTAs cited time constraints and cost as the two main reasons they did not enroll.
We are working towards institutionalizing the program by developing deeper relationships with existing academic programs, including public administration, educational studies, social work, etc. We will seek a seamless point of entry for VISTAs into these programs.
At the start, I read about identifying community partners, reflection practices, unit plans, and how service-learning stacked up with other learning models. I sat down to write a reflection paper, and was stumped. I'd been interested in the field for a while by then, and the logistics had always seemed pretty straightforward to me: see what needs to get done in the community (a waterway that's in need of cleanup, for example), see what needs to get done in the classroom (in science class, students need to learn microscope skills, or are looking at ecology or conservation) - put the two together, with some in-class preparation on the reasons why this work needs to be done, and then get the job done. Follow up with some written reflection in which students connect what they've learned in class with what they did in the real world, and voila! Service-learning. It seemed pretty straightforward, and as such the only reflection of my own I could come up with went something like "Yup, looks good to me!"
Fully aware of the fact that not only was that a very short paper but also not a particularly interesting one, I turned my focus from the classroom logistics of service-learning to the overarching rationale that drives the movement. The proverbial can of worms had been opened, and before I knew it I wasn't even too concerned about closing it back up again.
I'd feel remiss if I didn't mention what was going on in my work life at this time. I served as Literacy Coordinator for a project that placed UVM students in area elementary schools doing math and literacy tutoring. As the original intent was to have our ALIVE work overlap in some regard with our respective site work, my assessment of elementary service-learning models seemed a good fit. My work in an actual elementary classroom, however, proved to me once and for all that I had (and have) zero interest in becoming a classroom teacher. I began to realize that, as much as I absolutely adored the children that I worked with, I felt much more comfortable, not to mention productive, sitting hunched over my computer in my windowless office at the University. I think understandably, I started to wonder why. Having espoused activism in all its forms most of my life, it seemed odd that I would be content to remain behind the scenes, instead of on the front lines of the educational battle, in the classroom itself.
It was around this time that I picked up an article in my next set of readings entitled, "To Hell with Good Intentions", an address given by Monsignor Ivan Illich to a large group of volunteers preparing for service in Mexico in 1968. As the title implies, Illich uses the opportunity to chastise volunteers for their blind idealism. "There is no way for you to really meet with the underprivileged," he states, "since there is no common ground whatsoever for you to meet on… you cannot help being ultimately vacationing salesmen for the middle-class 'American Way of Life', since that is really the only life you know." I was furious! The margins of the article are filled with my hasty scribblings, primarily scathing questions directed at Illich with key words underlined repeatedly. I hated this man. Again, aware that a paper consisting simply of the words "Ivan Illich is an idiot" is not a particularly interesting one, I took a deep breath, held it, and dove deep into the source of my own "Good Intentions.
I read with interest an article called "The Irony of Service: Charity, Project and Social Change in Service-Learning", in which the author envisioned three paradigms or models of service. The first, Charity, is self-explanatory. It is limited both in timeframe and in the scope of its impact. A Project Model, wherein problems are identified and solutions are designed by the service provider, functions in a broader timeframe and touches on a broader scope. The key difference between this model and that of Social Change is the involvement of the people being served. Whereas Project Models design solutions to the problems from the "expert's" perspective, Social Change focuses on bringing together and educating the people facing the problem. It essentially seeks to identify and build upon the strengths of a community, rather than "fixing" individual problems. When well executed, a Social Change approach empowers a community to face any problem it might encounter, not merely those it faces today.
Here, then, was Illich's oversight, in believing that any service experience is necessarily one of Charity or at best a Project Model. He failed to understand that it is not the role of a volunteer to seek out common ground between themselves and the people they serve. Instead, we are to find the ground upon which those served stand and work from there. In that sense, the ground of the volunteer becomes almost irrelevant, as s/he serves as a conduit of information and resources to strengthen that which already exists in the community.
While as a VISTA I considered myself an underpaid agent of Social Change, it slowly dawned on me that in my position at UVM I was supporting a Project Model that involved stakeholders very rarely, if ever. For a literacy program that had been operating in schools for five years, we had almost no feedback from classroom teachers who had hosted our volunteers, and no feedback at all from the children they'd worked with. While this is not to say in any way that these oversights made the program an ineffectual one, it had, to my mind, serious ramifications on our ability to provide a meaningful service to children, not to mention a meaningful service opportunity for our students. Believing service-learning to be the educational answer to a Social Change model, and that its practices of engaging stakeholders before the fact of service and intense reflection after would highly benefit our program, I set about to infuse mwork with more of the service-learning ideology I'd been studying. As a second year VISTA left mainly to my own devices, my insistence upon service-learning in my work may or may not have run a little out of control.
For my supervisor, a member of the literacy faculty here on campus, my service-learning focus was pulling attention away from the literacy focus she would have preferred for the program. Though I didn't see them as conflicting in the least, her frustration was such that I found myself, not a week before our second ALIVE residency, sitting down to a meeting with her in which she recommended that I give some thought to finding a placement better suited for my service-learning interests - preferably by the end of the week. After over a year and a half working with the program, I now faced the prospect of finishing my second year of service with a completely new project. I can't overstate not only the initial panic of the moment but also how incredibly blessed I felt when, not long after, I was welcomed with open arms into the John Dewey Project. Though it might not have been the easiest transition to undergo, the end result is one for which I am incredibly thankful.
My mother is sitting among you here today, and I think she, above anyone else, can give you a sense of what happens to me when I feel challenged. I'm passionately stubborn enough as it is, but when challenged I kick into single-minded overdrive. Thankfully the John Dewey Project was the perfect place from which to launch my crusade for service-learning, determined to prove that it was not a distraction from my work but was instead truly at the heart of it. My reading of the book An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of America following that second residency helped to solidify the reasons why.
The author, Benjamin Barber, begins by examining our shared sense of America as an "orphan" of Great Britain. By perpetuating this feeling both in explicit history and implicit understanding, our sense is of our history beginning with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. As such, says Barber, we have essentially liberated ourselves from the ties of influence and, more importantly, of history itself, along with its attendant elements of action and consequence. We created for ourselves a blank slate upon which any American story might be told. For some, a liberating prospect, but Barber contends that, without a strong sense of history backing us and of making history ourselves with our every decision, we are free to do nothing but destroy each other. The more we praise the American Dream of the Individual, goes the argument, the more we relegate that individual's context (the community and indeed the historical moment in which they live) to a perilously far back burner.
And here I stumbled onto the crux of it all - connectivity - what I saw painfully lacking in the world at large, and what service-learning strove to instill in students. Here too was the answer to the "why" question that inevitably plagues those of us who choose this wacky and wonderful VISTA life. Even into my second year, I'd never been able to answer it to my satisfaction, but here it was, so simple I'd overlooked it entirely. I want to live in a world where people understand that everything they do - everything, from buying organic to tossing a cigarette butt out a car window - has an affect on the world at large. From a young age, I've been plagued by the tiny choices people make and their unwillingness to acknowledge the larger consequences of their actions. I blame, as so many of us do, Kermit the Frog. He told me, when I was probably five or so, to turn off the water when I was brushing my teeth, a simple way to conserve resources. From there on out, I was obsessed, with recycling, social responsibility, and meticulous attention to every moment we're faced with a choice (which, I would contend, is indeed every moment). So when Benjamin Barber linked our typically American oversight of such details to the way our youth are taught history, it finally clicked for me. Why should I feel obligated to protest the effects of our stubborn egoism while remaining unwilling to work to combat the very egoism itself?
So this is the work that I do. I don't chain myself to trees, and I don't throw paint on people wearing pelts, and I don't arm myself to the teeth in an underground bunker in Idaho, crossing my fingers for the day when the system comes crashing down. I promote service-learning, because I believe that it can't help but build connections between the individual and the collective, between history and the present. And because I believe that without an understanding of those connections, Americans will persist in thinking that a nation of autonomous beings exerting their individual freedoms without regard for one another is a free nation. And I do this work because I think that's ridiculous. True democracy cannot exist without connectivity, and we cannot continue much longer as a nation, let alone as a species, if we continue to kid ourselves otherwise.
Before this year, I never could have said that. My work with ALIVE may not have produced a unit plan, or a research article, or a comprehensive document on service-learning practices in 3rd grade classes in eastern Kansas, but I can articulate what's important to me, and I can say with enormous pride that I am doing something about it. For an independent study designed to in part "promote reflective practice and engaged citizenship", I can think of no greater outcome.
If all goes according to planned, I'll be spending my next year, my third as a VISTA, continuing to serve with the John Dewey Project. I will be supporting service-learning efforts around the state, primarily in high schools. My position will be underfunded and misunderstood. I'll take the calm for granted and instantly be barraged with fifteen new things to do. I'll curse myself as a slacker and drive myself crazy. And I'll be doing the work that I love. I understand now that I can choose this - choose to make endless photocopies for school reform or create spreadsheets for sweeping social change - because the real proof of your life is not in the grand gestures, but in the tiniest ones. As Annie Dillard once so eloquently put it, "How you spend your days is, of course, how you spend your life."
Enormous thanks go to Chris and my John Dewey Project family for giving a home to my purpose when it seemed to have none; to my parents, one of whom is here today, for giving me space to be inarticulate and directionless when I need to be, and for that distant day when they no longer ask me when I'm going to get a real job; and above all to my fellow VISTAs in ALIVE, for never ceasing to amaze me with their incredibly powerful dedication. You are all truly beautiful people, and give me great hope for the world we're helping to shape.
Through the ALIVE Program A*VISTA members will obtain academic credit for extended, structured reflection and completion of projects. Volunteer scholars develop relationships with UVM faculty members who have expertise in an academic area of interest to them. These include, education, community development and applied economics, psychology, social work, and public administration. In the first course, each volunteer scholar will be advised by a review committee that includes a UVM faculty advisor, a community advisor, and a faculty or staff representative from the ALIVE program. The volunteer scholar will be responsible for choosing their community advisor. Each volunteer scholar will develop a study plan and complete a community analysis in conjunction with their committee. During the second course they will also design a study plan but will work on developing their own project to meet the course requirements. Credit is awarded only after volunteer scholars have completed their year of service and met all of the requirements laid out by their review committee and the ALIVE program.
The ALIVE curriculum will be divided into two distinct, but related, 3 credit courses. These courses are offered at an undergraduate or graduate level. During both courses, each volunteer scholar is asked to create/refine a study plan in conjunction with his/her review committee. Cohorts of 5-8 "volunteer scholars" meet one or two times over the course of their year of service in "residency weekends," during which they meet with members of their ALIVE review committee and participate in workshops. During the first course "volunteer scholars" will follow a more traditional format with regular classroom sessions. The second course will be similar to an independent study. Cohorts will begin in October. Academic scholars can participate in either one or two courses. The two courses cannot be completed concurrently.
VISTA members endure financial sacrifices that make the availability of additional scholarships essential. During their year of service, VISTA members earn a small stipend that barely covers lodging and food. They also receive an educational award to cover past student loans or to pay for continued education ($4,725). For those volunteers who have accumulated large student loans or who require student loans to fund future educational opportunities this award is often used up quickly. VISTA members with limited financial means may find the costs of the ALIVE program (anywhere from three to six credits) prohibitive.
The University of Vermont has agreed to provide scholarships to cover up to six graduate or undergraduate credits obtained in the ALIVE program to a select number of VISTA members enrolled in an academic program at UVM. The scholarships will be awarded after volunteer scholars have been officially admitted into an accredited UVM academic program. This commitment will be ongoing.
The University of Vermont and the federal leadership of VISTA hope to build broad-based support for the kinds of academic experience that the ALIVE program will afford VISTA members.
The ALIVE Program serves as an opportunity for UVM faculty from a variety of disciplines and community practitioners to learn and work together on community engagement efforts. The relationships that are forged between faculty and community sites will be nurtured and supported in a variety of ways, including the raising of additional funds for university/community collaborations. Some UVM graduate and undergraduate academic programs inevitably benefit from such collaborations.
Opening enrollment to VISTAs regionally or even nationally is anticipated. Coinciding with the release of an independent evaluator’s report, an agenda for replicating the ALIVE Program model will be created. Several options for replication exist including the development of a network of sister institutions, replication subgrants, and technical assistance workshops.
An agenda for replicating the ALIVE Program model regionally and nationally is underway. Several options are under consideration including the development of a network of sister institutions, sub grants, and technical assistance workshops. Other colleges and universities have expressed interest in replicating or adapting the ALIVE program model developed at the University of Vermont.
For further information about these efforts contact Christopher Koliba, program director.
Last modified April 16 2003 02:31 PM
