Focus is on service learning

Learning experience projects help students as well as the community.

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By Hannah Poturalski and Hannah Porturalski
Staff Writer Updated 2:53 AM Monday, September 26, 2011

OXFORD — Each year thousands of Miami University students give more than $1.2 million in service hours to address issues such as hunger, poverty and illiteracy — a figure based on the value of a volunteer hour by Independent Sector.

Increasingly, higher education institutions across the country are embracing service projects as a way to improve student learning and offer significant support to surrounding communities.

Monica Ways, director of community engagement and service at Miami, said the school offers 70 courses designated as service learning classes. Ways said the university strives to “create an informed citizenry” by connecting curriculum to experience.

Courses that blend some form of community service — or “service learning” — into the curriculum have been around for decades, but they’re becoming more popular with students and faculty.

“We are focusing more on how people learn,” said Sherrill Sellers, associate professor of family studies and social work. “We found lectures are good, but if you want students to retain knowledge, they have to have experience. They need the opportunity to see where theory and practice come together.”

Ways said volunteerism usually begins with small things, such as picking up trash, and can evolve into broader experiences.

“Miami students come (here) with a history of volunteerism,” Ways said.

“Once they have that experience we hope they get bit by the civic bug.”

Senior Zach Shindorf has been volunteering at the Community Counseling & Crisis Center since his sophomore year. He answers calls to the suicide prevention lifeline.

“I’m a psychology major so it goes together; it gave me a chance to help people the way I wanted to,” Shindorf said.

Shindorf was the 2011 recipient of the Warren T. Nelson Award for Outstanding Community Service from the Cliff Alexander Office of Fraternity & Sorority Life. A member of Beta Theta Pi, Shindorf said he was attracted to his fraternity because of its high level of volunteering. In 2010, Beta Theta Pi was one of only two fraternities at Miami to reach 100 percent volunteer involvement.

Shindorf is a founding member of a new student group called Healthy Hearts, which works to fight childhood obesity, and he mentors at-risk children in the Talawanda School District.

“I’m there as a steady support system,” Shindorf said of mentoring. “I’ve always been involved in volunteering, since middle school.”

The volunteering of Miami students reaches beyond Oxford to include the Center of Hope in Middletown, Hamilton Living Water Ministry, and the Middletown, Hamilton and Talawanda school districts through the Adopt-a-School program.

“When students have those kind of meaningful experiences they tell others about it,” Ways said.

Cathy Hester, executive director of Living Water Ministry, said her agency has volunteers from all three Miami campuses, but primarily Oxford. In 2010, 225 Miami students provided more than 3,200 service hours to the ministry.

Hester said without help from volunteers, Living Water wouldn’t be able to serve as many children as it does — about 100 a day.

“They are such a positive role model for our students,” Hester said. “The kids are so excited when they see them and work so much harder.”

Hester said volunteers do everything from tutoring and mentoring, intervention and literacy through Miami’s psychology department, and maintenance. Hester said she notices a transformation in both the children and volunteers.

“College students have such an impact in our lives but a change occurs in college students that haven’t had the opportunity to work with inner city kids,” Hester said.

Jennifer Levering, director of the Cliff Alexander Office, said the student body at Miami is more active than she’s used to — having come from a similar role at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“It’s a more involved community and it’s great to see a different level of involvement,” Levering said.

In 2010, more than 4,000 students active in the university’s Greek system provided surrounding communities with more than 40,000 service hours, according to statistics from the Cliff Alexander Office. Levering said only about 60 percent of Greek organizations report to her office their service activities. She’s working to increase reporting to 100 percent.

“We focus on helping students learn the difference (between service and philanthropy) and to do a balance,” Levering said.

The Greek system raised more than $65,000 last year.

Staff writer Christopher Magan contributed to this report.

Service continued on A3

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