Community Engaged Education

by Kevin Warneke 

At UNO, service learning is defined as a method of teaching that combines classroom instruction with meaningful, community-identified service. UNO instructors partner with community organizations as co-teachers and encourage a heightened sense of community, civic engagement and personal responsibility for students while building capacity and contributing real community impact.

Julie Dierberger knows there is power in experience. As the Paul Sather Distinguished Director of UNO’s Service Learning Academy, Dierberger has witnessed students realize this when their academic learning is combined with community service. “When students have an experience, we know they learn the classroom concepts better. There is power in connecting the learning component with service. Service-learning is that high impact, powerful practice.”

Since 1998, UNO educators and community leaders have formally partnered to provide service learning experiences in the university classroom and throughout Omaha.

Dierberger sends a nod of gratitude to Marilyn Leach, then director of UNO’s Center for Faculty Development, along with Nora Bacon, Paul Sather and campus administration, for championing service learning in its early days. Twenty-five years ago, academic institutions, especially in urban areas, began to realize the importance of service learning as a connector to their communities.

Their charge: Appraise the appetite for service learning among UNO faculty and administrators. Their message: Consider incorporating service learning into your classroom curriculum. These early adopters saw service learning for what it is – a highly efficient and effective teaching strategy that benefits the student and community, while meeting UNO’s metropolitan mission.

UNO faculty responded to this call to action. The eight service learning courses taught 25 years ago have grown to 241 courses during the 2022-23 academic year at UNO. These courses were spread among UNO’s six academic colleges and UNL’s College of Engineering and involved 3,946 students (nearly 3,500 service learning courses have been offered during the past 25 years).

Dierberger said UNO’s Department of Social Work was an early adopter of service learning. A class taught by Sather, who retired in 2017, illustrates how adding service learning can transform a course.

In the course, first-year graduate students analyzed data that focused on community issues such as poverty, homelessness and the political legislative processes that foster disparity. The first time he taught the course, students spent the entire semester in the classroom. “I don’t know who looked at the clock on the wall more, the students or me. I vowed to never teach that course in the same way again,” Sather recalled.

The second time around, Sather and his students partnered with a housing agency in north Omaha. Students worked with clients who struggled to maintain safe, affordable housing, while teetering on the brink of homelessness. Students worked with agency staff to research trends in available affordable housing, the lending practices of community banks and rental discrimination. They also developed financial literacy materials for staff use.

If his students didn’t initially comprehend the impact of their work, they did during a semester-ending reception with the agency’s staff, board members and clients, Sather said.

When UNO educators and community leaders partner to provide service learning experiences for students taking their college courses, the outcomes can change their lives.

In one case, the service-learning experience inspired a high school student to become a teacher.

The student’s service learning experience stemmed from an Introduction to Teaching English as a Second Language course taught by Sandra Rodriguez-Arroyo, associate professor of teacher education at UNO, and Anne O’Hara, director of the Learning Community Center of South Omaha, or LCCSO. O’Hara sought a way for families served by the center to learn about higher education. Rodriguez-Arroyo always was looking for ways to give her students practical experience and linked the course goals to the LCCSO opportunities so students in her course guide families as they learn English while exposing them to higher education.

The student was a high school sophomore when she worked with Rodriguez-Arroyo’s teacher candidates and visited UNO for the first time. She told the teacher candidates that she too wanted to become an educator. At UNO, she took Rodriguez-Arroyo’s class and found herself on the other end of the conversation – guiding families at LCCSO in the same way students worked with her family years previously.

The impact on the community is important, O’Hara said. Families that have participated in the program reported to her that their children showed increased interest in attending college. Some even pursue careers in education, she said. “Watching former high school participants engage with families as UNO students brings the program full circle.”

Rodriguez-Arroyo knows her former pupil will make a great educator, partly because her service learning courses have prepared her to work with diverse families. “Service learning courses are a way of preparing teacher candidates during their teacher education – not after, when they’re already in the classroom.”

Dierberger has “hundreds more” stories of service learning in action to tell, including the one that illustrates how service learning can be incorporated into almost any academic course. In a mathematics class, students used data visualization to map the service sites used during the pandemic by MilkWorks, an organization that provides expert resources for new mothers. “Their work helped MilkWorks better understand how best to serve its families.”

Here’s another, one that focuses on a psychology course and operant learning techniques, which involve using positive reinforcement to influence behavior. The Nebraska Humane Society knows that if dogs display certain behaviors – remaining calm, the ability to shake or sit on command and holding eye contact – they are more likely to get adopted. Students in the course worked with the animals by reinforcing positive behaviors and saw them get adopted.

By the numbers, Dierberger knows service learning courses are having a positive impact on student retention at UNO: Students involved in service learning courses have a 10 percent higher retention rate than those who aren’t.

Numbers aside, Dierberger said, service learning experiences give students concrete examples to share when they interview for jobs, especially that first one. Picture this conversation: “I took a class in research methods at UNO. In my class, I applied the course concepts and I completed a project with a community partner. Here were the outcomes.”

Students, through their service learning experiences, practice teamwork – “You’re interacting with people. You’re not just sitting in a classroom by yourself.” – learn to problem solve and practice critical thinking.

“If people can talk about those experiences,” Dierberger said, “they can get better jobs, which will impact their social mobility, and their families’ future.”

Dierberger’s wish list for the academy’s next 25 years speaks to passion, perspective and an approach aimed to impact outcomes such as student social mobility and concrete community change. “My call to action? We want faculty members who are passionate about applying their course concepts in partnership in our community. We especially want our faculty members to consider teaching service learning courses in the first few years of a student’s career at UNO.”

Learn more about the history of the UNO Service Learning Academy in their 25th Anniversary Newsletter. 

 

Maverick Philanthropy Initiative

Thanks to the Maverick Philanthropy Initiative, students not only learn about the importance of service, they also come to understand the power of giving.

“It’s a compelling combination,” said Julie Dierberger, the Service Learning Academy’s Paul Sather Distinguished Director. “It’s important at UNO because of what we are and who we are. We are creating the next generation of philanthropists.”

Students taking service learning courses who practice philanthropy learn about the impact of giving by visiting with nonprofit leaders, working collaboratively with these organizations and championing social change. The added ingredient to the process is they have a say in which nonprofits receive grant funding made possible by the Maverick Philanthropy Initiative.

“Communities get much-needed support while a whole new generation learns the ins and outs of effective philanthropy,” said Marlina Davidson, who with her husband, Dusty, were the initiative’s founding donors. To date, the initiative has allocated more than $70,000 in funding to local nonprofits while engaging 2,061 students in 88 courses.

Consider that nearly 50 percent of UNO’s students are first generation and the importance of adding philanthropy to the process can be enduring, Dierberger said. “We want to give students the opportunity to think how they give of their time, their talent, and, because of the initiative, their treasure.”

Students taking a speech course with a service learning component, for example, may be challenged to advocate for their chosen nonprofit. “Be the best persuader,” Dierberger said. “That’s the point of the class.”

Davidson, assistant director of academic technologies at UNO, said supporting the initiative made sense for her and her husband. “What we love is that we are able to give to our community and provide students an opportunity to be a part of that giving.”