From the Margin to the Mainstream:
The Faculty Role in Advancing
Service-Learning on Community Colleges

Collaboration in action has been the central defining feature of the service-learning program at Middlesex Community College since its inception in 1992. In the belief that the most effective and sustainable service-learning program should model the core values of reciprocity and equality, we have from the beginning sought an open and free exchange with faculty, administrators, staff, students, and community agencies. We recognize that our program will grow only as a result of a collective and collaborative effort. This climate of openness was succinctly described by a first-year faculty member who joined the service-learning faculty group this year. She relayed her initial fears about being in a group with experienced professors and then remarked, "I felt so supported and valued by the group; people were really interested in what I had to offer." In the following paper we will discuss how our program demonstrates collaboration in action and share illustrative milestones.

Middlesex Community College (MCC), established in 1970, is the largest community college in the commonwealth

of Massachusetts. The college serves a culturally diverse community at two

campuses, one in suburban Bedford and one in the city of Lowell. MCC has 127 full-time and 180 part-time faculty members who are responsible for the instruction of 4,300 students. MCC, a vital educational, economic and cultural resource for Middlesex County, has committed its resources to develop nationally recognized programs in student success (Roueche & Roueche, 1993), instructional development (Duffy & Jones, 1995; Jones & Duffy, 1991), international study (Rubin, 1995) and most recently, service-learning (Edington, 1995). The culture at MCC values student-centered approaches, supports innovation in the classroom, encourages cooperation among administrators, faculty, and staff, and strives to be responsive to the needs of the local community.

Hunger, Homelessness, and Social Policy was MCC's initial service-learning course in 1992. The course was developed through the efforts of Dean of Social Sciences Pamela Edington, who made connections with the community, a local university community service program, and a VISTA volunteer. Successful implementation of the course provided evidence on two critical issues. First, students at the college were interested in pursuing a course with service-learning; second, connecting to the community could be beneficial to everyone concerned. With this concrete information available, we could justify the value of the program and discuss possibilities for expansion.

The early strategy of collaborating with others has remained a standard operating procedure in our program and has resulted in steady and deliberate growth, as shown in Table 1 below.

Three milestones in our program development effectively reinforce our initial vision that collaboration in action would lead to a strong and sustainable program:

Milestone 1: Collaboration with faculty

In order to build faculty interest in service-learning and to invite additional partners into ownership of the program, we shared information on service-learning as a pedagogy, cited the Hunger, Homelessness, and Social Policy course as a concrete example, and sought resources for faculty innovators willing to try a new approach. In 1993, with the help of an Integrating Service in Academic Study grant from the Campus Compact National Center for Community Colleges and matching funds from Middlesex, stipends were offered to four faculty in the Social Sciences division to create and pilot service-learning options in their courses.

The four faculty, with Pamela Edington and Geralyn Vasile, formed a team that met regularly throughout the semester.

An equally important support for faculty was the creation and maintenance of authentic connections with organizations and agencies that were potential collaborators in the local community. The current demands on faculty time are so pressing that it was essential to identify an additional partner to interface with community representatives. The VISTA volunteer, Geralyn Vasile, helped to identify community needs and to educate faculty on best practices in service-learning. Her continuation in this role was essential to our success.

In addition, Dean Edington remained a member of the team, providing insights from her own service-learning experience and her perspective as an administrator. The team met together, compared notes, and began to form the nucleus for further expansion. Faculty raised concerns about student learning, Geralyn reflected questions and needs from the community,

and Pamela helped to handle administrative matters expeditiously. At the end of the semester, the team presented findings at a regional conference. The presentation was a way to celebrate and share the lessons we had learned. The collaboration in action of faculty, staff, and administration at MCC's divisional level led to an awareness of the need to incorporate the participation and support of the whole institution.

Milestone 2: Collaboration within the institution

In order to expand service-learning beyond the division of social sciences and to offer new opportunities for faculty and students, we needed to secure a larger share of institutional resources. Our chief academic officers, Dr. Carl Schilling, and later Dr. Charmi Sperling, encouraged the linkage of service-learning with other high-priority initiatives at the college, such as instructional development and core curriculum. With institutional support from MCC President Carole A. Cowan and funding from the college and a Learn and Serve America grant from the Massachusetts Commission on National and Community Service in 1994 and 1995, a budget for service-learning was incorporated into MCC's financial planning. By securing the position of service-learning coordinator, we were able to ensure that relationships with the community could grow in harmony with the growth of our service-learning courses in academic programs.

To interest more faculty in service-learning, we joined with the college's instructional development program, Activating Learning in the Classroom (ALC), to provide two seminars. Attending faculty learned about service-learning in the first seminar, created a written plan for implementing service-learning in one of their courses, and then shared their plan with colleagues in the second seminar. As a result of the seminars, additional faculty incorporated service-learning into their courses and a part of the ALC program. Service-learning now enters into many formal and informal presentations about teaching and learning at the college.

Milestone 3: Collaboration outside the institution

One of the most important outcomes of the Learn and Serve grant was the linkage with a statewide consortium of higher education institutions and stronger connections with a much larger national network. Membership in the statewide consortium had important effects on the continuous improvements of our course work and community connections. By sharing our syllabi and experiences, we contributed to the growing base of knowledge of service-learning. By establishing a service-learning advisory board with community members, we ensured that our work at the college would be aligned with the needs and concerns of our local community partners.

In 1995 three members of the MCC community accepted positions that would further enhance collaboration outside of our institution. President Carole A. Cowan was elected co-chair of the Massachusetts Campus Compact, Dean Pamela Edington was elected as co-chair of the Advisory Board of the Massachusetts Campus Compact, and Professor Donna K. Duffy was selected to join the Invisible College, a national group of educators interested in service-learning. The active involvement of a president, dean, and professor demonstrated the united commitment of our institution to service-learning; this collaboration within our college remains a key factor in the continuing success of our service-learning programs.

Partnerships with organizations outside of the college provided us with more new ideas and opportunities. We applied for a grant from the Campus Compact National Center for Community Colleges focusing on the The Faculty Role: From the Margin to the Mainstream. As a recipient of this grant, we have been able to expand service-learning on our campus, assist more than ten emerging service-learning programs in New England, and contribute to the advancement of service-learning theory and methods nationally.

During the past semester we have worked to deepen the dialogue and discussion about service-learning on our campus. In our newly formed faculty group, we have talked about differences in how we incorporate service-learning into our courses and have focused on unique aspects of our program that we can share with others. The collaboration of the faculty group has resulted in the creation of a resource guide and video that will be shared with other institutions. The faculty meetings have also facilitated more connections among faculty with the possibility of joint projects in the future.

Our outreach projects have broadened our vision for additional collaborations with other colleges and community organizations. This work has enabled us to consider directions for future continued growth.

The progress over the past four years has been guided by the collaborative efforts of many people; we envision collaboration with others as forming the framework for our future. On our campus, we would like to engage more faculty and administrators from a wider range of disciplines, create explicit links between co-curricular activities and the academic program, and continue to develop different models for using service-learning. Through our service-learning advisory board, we hope to expand into other areas in the community and to involve community members in course work in a more deliberate way.

We are anxious to provide more linkages between our college faculty and the faculty at other colleges in New England through both joint conferences and e-mail connections. The initial strand of service-learning begun in 1992 has formed into a web of many individuals in our MCC community. Through the work of the Margin to Mainstream grant in recent months, strands of service-learning in other New England colleges are now developing into webs. In the future, we hope that our collaboration with other institutions will be so strong and so extensive that we live up to the words of the Ethiopian proverb, "When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion."

References

Duffy, D. K., & Jones, J. W. (1995). Teaching within the rhythms of the semester. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Edington, P. (1995). The community of service learning. In M. Miller & L. Steele, Service counts: lessons from the field of service and higher education (pp. 93-96). Denver: Education Commission of the States.

Jones, J. W., & Duffy, D. K. (1991). Activating learning in the classroom: challenge, collaborate, celebrate. The Journal of Staff, Program, & Organization Development, 9(4), 231-237.

Roueche, J. E., & Roueche, S. D. (1993). Between a rock and a hard place: the at-risk student in the open-door college. Washington, DC: Community College Press.

Rubin, A. (1995, May 26). Looking abroad. The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. 839-840.

		Civic Democracy and Civil Diversity
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