UVM Students in the Dominican Republic

Since 2005, UVM students have been engaged with Haitian migrant communities in the Dominican Republic as part of three different but linked service-learning courses. These students support long-term capacity-building projects in the areas of education, public health, community gardening, and human rights. The networks built in both Vermont and Haiti by this service-learning partnerships have been instrumental in responding to the recent earthquake.

For more information, visit:

http://bateylibertad.org/
http://seedsofselfreliance.org/

CDAE 195: Event Planning

A service-learning event-planning course taught in the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics has a longstanding partnership with the Burlington Parks and Recreation Department and the Church Street Marketplace. The class assists with coordination and promotion of the Burlington Winter Fest, providing students with real-world experiences in event planning, marketing, and public relations while strengthening a valued partnership.

Some quotes from student reflections:

"I believe that learning through doing is the best form of learning. This is the real deal."

"We, the students in the event planning class, made connections between the university and the community. This is really important in a tight-knit community such as Burlington, to see the students doing something positive and giving back to the community."

"Working with the community partners has helped me connect to the Burlington community in a way I wouldn't have been able to do from just experiencing UVM and Burlington from a UVM students perspective."

"I have noticed that one of my issues with the classes I have taken for a non CDAE major] has tended to paint a bleak and depressing picture of our society, economy and future. ... I found this class very useful and rewarding because in contrast, I really felt like we were not just learning, but contributing to society and our community in a way that produces an event with positive results and a solution to some of our society's flaws."

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Supporting Scholarship that Changes the World

Although he is relatively new on campus, Ernesto Mendez is already well known at the University of Vermont as an innovative practitioner of Participatory Action Research- an approach to research that emphasizes contributions to the public good by involving the community as a full partner in the research process. “One of the best surprises I discovered when I first started working at UVM,” says Professor Mendez, “was the existence of the CUPS office. CUPS provides much needed and exceptional support for those academics that want to engage in making their work directly useful to the wider community. Without this support, doing engaged scholarship at UVM would be very difficult, if not impossible.”

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Inspiring Faculty toward Creativity

Jennifer Pontius is a new faculty member this year in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at UVM. This spring, Jen created a class called NR 140: Natural Resource Biostatistics, designated a service-learning course, where she helped her students expand statistics into the community. The students analyzed data for the US Forest Service, benefiting this organization greatly. Jen prepared for a long period of time to make the course run smoothly and created a comprehensive syllabus for her students to follow. Once the course was completed, students raved about the experience, with one stating “I learned how to transform data and ideas into real life applications.” Jen plans developing her ideas and knowledge of service-learning for future initiatives and plans on teaching this course again next spring.

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Service-Learning in "Unexpected Places"

Service-learning is a classroom component that may be viewed as only applicable to certain academic disciplines. Faculty members at UVM prove this is false though, applying service-learning to a unique array of courses. Sheila Weaver in Math and Statistics, has used service-learning in many of her courses, allowing students to learn math while aiding local non-profits such as the ECHO Center. Matthew Carlson in Political Science has proved the idea that “you learn a concept better when you teach it to someone else,” by giving his students the opportunity to teach what they are learning to elementary school children. Other “unexpected places” to find service-learning are in Scott McLaughlin’s history class and in Kazuko Suzuki Carlson’s Japanese classes, showing that service-learning can be used to benefit students, faculty, and the community in a variety of areas.

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Fostering Civically-Engaged Students for the Next Generation

Nick Balfour is a native Vermonter with a passion for community service at UVM. Nick is an incoming junior, who during his time at UVM has participated in multiple initiatives to better himself, fellow students, and the community. These include the Community Service Scholars Program (CSSP), TREK orientation programs, Alternative Spring Break, and the advisory committee for the UVM office of Community-University Partnerships and Service-Learning (CUPS). Nick has shown an incredible amount of commitment and dedication to everything he has been involved with and promises to be a future leader of community service at UVM.

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Last modified March 01 2010 09:53 AM