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

Over the past ten years, many community colleges nationwide have considered and implemented service-learning strategies on their campuses. In 1990, to support these efforts and align service-learning with good teaching and scholarship, the Campus Compact National Center for Community Colleges (the Center) was established. Located on the Mesa Community College campus in Mesa, Arizona, the Center is recognized as a national service-learning resource for community colleges.

In 1994, with funding from the Maricopa Community College District/Mesa Community College and Campus Compact, the RAND Corporation assessed the Center and its programs, providing recommendations designed to guide future planning. Titled Future Directions for the Campus Compact Center for Community Colleges (Futures), the 1994 RAND report identified the need for faculty training with financial support and publication of written resource materials as the major obstacles participants encountered in the development of service-learning programs. The report defines a need for technical assistance to help service-learning coordinators, faculty, and administrators build understanding and support for service-learning on campus. The following resources were identified to satisfy this need: descriptive information about what service-learning is and how it can benefit students, faculty, the institution, and the community; models; case studies of how other institutions have overcome these obstacles; and guidelines or suggestions for winning faculty support and participation.

The RAND report and other national service-learning initiatives that aligned service-learning with faculty development led the Center to develop The Faculty Role: From the Margin to the Mainstream project. This project builds on the experiences of service-learning faculty and colleges and advances service-learning efforts at a rate never experienced before on college campuses.

Funded by the Corporation for National Service Learn and Serve America: Higher Education, the project was developed on the belief that faculty are the key to integrating service-learning on community colleges and that they have the ability to influence their peers to consider and employ this pedagogy. The project is also consistent with national Campus Compact initiatives to strengthen the academic nature of service-learning and the Corporation for National Service goals to provide high-quality learning opportunities to college students through service that meets community needs.

The project also is consistent with the educational reform movement process suggested by Palmer (1996). His thesis is that educational movements develop through a series of four stages. In the first stage, an individual makes a decision to stop leading a "divided life" and make a personal commitment to following his or her values. In the second stage, individuals begin to form affinity for mutual encouragement and support, moving from an individual commitment to group cohesion. In the third stage, individuals within the group discover that their problems are not private but have been determined by public conditions and therefore require public remedies. In the fourth stage, the individuals and the group develop ways of rewarding people for sustaining the movement itself.

The Faculty Role: From the Margin to the Mainstream project has much in common with the movement approach to education suggested by Palmer. It helps faculty to recognize that there are personal as well as academic reasons to integrate service-learning into their courses. It creates affinity among service-learning faculty, providing encouragement and support for faculty who oftentimes feel "marginalized." The project creates a public voice, proclaiming to others the authenticity of service-learning pedagogy. And finally, faculty engaged in service-learning acquire rewards both within the academy and outside. This project, therefore, renews individuals, campuses, and communities as they participate in academic-based service and learning.

The major goal of the project is to facilitate the successful integration of principles of good service-learning practice into faculty development and the academic curriculum. The project design and activities engage five faculty in encouraging and supporting service-learning on each of their own campuses and ten additional campuses within a geographic region. The project faculty members and their geographic regions are outlined on the following page.

This trained cadre of service-learning faculty work with three constituencies: (1) a group of faculty on each of their own campuses; (2) faculty on the ten campuses within each of their assigned regions; and (3) faculty they impact through state, regional, and national workshops and conferences. In addition, the project is committed to developing and distributing high-quality service-learning resources that establish standards of good practice, campus integration models, and strategies to integrate service-learning into the academic core of the academy.

It is usually the case that faculty participate in large service-learning conferences or institutes that provide information on the why and the how of this teaching strategy. While many times the information and resources motivate faculty to develop or enhance service-learning within their courses, responses to specific concerns and the lack of follow-up often leave faculty without a firm commitment and plan. The Faculty Role: From the Margin to the Mainstream project operates differently. Project faculty members meet with community college faculty one-on-one and in small groups on their campus to provide information, encouragement, support, and technical assistance. The project faculty orient their work to the needs and assets that exist within each campus and the interests of each faculty member.

This process yields (1) answers to specific questions faculty pose, (2) resources specific to the academic discipline of the faculty member, (3) strategies and action plans to integrate service into college courses, and (4) follow-up that supports the faculty member long-term.

This project significantly expands the work of the Center, state Campus Compacts, the national Campus Compact, and other national service-learning and education organizations.

Administrators who have been limited by time and resources in their ability to educate, train, and provide technical assistance and support to community college faculty are now assisted by project faculty to advance service-learning on community colleges.

The Faculty Role: From the Margin to the Mainstream

During its first year, the five project faculty interacted with over three hundred community college faculty on more than fifty campuses. Their efforts have led to an increase in the number of service-learning faculty and the development of resources and strategies that support service-learning as an effective pedagogy.

In this sourcebook, the project faculty (1) identify five models of service-learning integration, (2) provide lessons learned from their first-year experiences, and (3) develop five case studies for the reader to consider in integrating service into the academic curriculum.

You will explore the history, challenges, strategies, and successes of five community colleges in their efforts to move service-learning to the academic core of their institutions. You will find many common themes among the models, as well as specific strategies that correspond to the campus culture and other conditions. We encourage you to glean strategies from these models that assist you and your campus in moving service-learning to its mainstream. You will examine conceptual and practical lessons from the field that have developed through their work with over three hundred faculty members. And you will examine five case studies that address common challenges to service-learning integration and encourage you to create successful solutions to the dilemmas.

It is our hope that this sourcebook motivates and educates faculty, administrators, students, and community partners to consider its models, share its lessons, and learn from its case studies. The lasting outcomes will foster a philosophy and belief by faculty and administrators that service-learning is a legitimate teaching method. Its rewards lie in student academic learning, faculty development, and the positive contribution community colleges make in their communities.

Gray, M. J. (1994). Future directions for the Campus Compact Center for Community Colleges: Project summary and report. Los Angeles: RAND Institute for Education and Training.

Palmer, P. (1996). Divided no more: A movement approach to educational reform. Higher Education Exchange. Kettering Foundation.

		Collaboration in Action: Service-Learning at Middlesex Community College
		Foreword
		Title Page