The Future of Education

Traditionally, liberal arts curricula were designed to educate the whole person, refining students’ abilities to think critically and solve problems across a wide range of disciplines. In the face of criticism that the liberal arts are elitist, archaic, and fail to prepare students for particular careers, many liberal education institutions invested significant resources in the development of more pragmatic or applied curricula, with a particular emphasis on experiential learning through community-engagement efforts. These service learning experiences not only improve the institutions’ connections with the local community, but also foster students’ abilities to apply their knowledge and abilities to address important social issues in a real world laboratory while also developing their civic engagement. Moreover, project-based service learning allows students to develop portfolios of experiences demonstrating the utility of their liberal arts education to the professional world.
As a professor at a liberal arts institution whose mission is to “prepare students for global citizenship and responsible leadership, empowering graduates to pursue meaningful lives and productive careers,”1 I have taught 15 undergraduate community engagement courses, connecting more than 300 students with 14 local nonprofit organizations over the past five years. This presentation explores the students’ and community partners’ perspectives to develop a set of best practice principles designed to achieve mutually beneficial, transformative learning experiences for undergraduate students. These best practice principles focus on the achievement of five particular outcomes: (1) the alignment of course learning goals with organizational needs; (2) community partner benefits, and the development of the students’ (3) service perspective, (4) civic engagement, and (5) abilities to articulate the value of these experiences in professional terms. This presentaton is appropriate for conference participants interested in learning more about the effective development and execution of service learning and community engagement experiences in post-secondary, liberal education.

Keywords: Experiential learning, community engagement, service learning, civic engagement;

References: 
[1] Rollins College Mission Statement. (2014, May 9). Retrieved from: https://www.rollins.edu/about-rollins/mission/