Service Learning courses provide Montana State University students with the opportunity to link academic study with community involvement. Students use information from these courses to address real needs of local and global communities. Student learning and service to the community are essential elements of these educational experiences. Through critical reflection, students integrate the knowledge and skills they are learning in class with applications in the real world.
Service learning courses enhance academic learning by helping students develop work-related skills, enhance their sense of civic responsibility, clarify their academic goals/aspirations, and increase awareness of moral and ethical issues while providing valuable assistance to non-profit community organizations. For many students, service learning enlivens the course and further engages them in meaningful understanding of academic content.
Benefits to Service Learning
- Service learning allows students to apply their learned classroom skills in a real world environment.
- Through service learning, students are able to gain a deeper understanding of their course work.
- Opportunity to connect with the community and to become more civically engaged.
- Opportunity to gain knowledge and firsthand experience about the inner workings of community based organizations and non-profits.
- Develops research, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills.
- Gain career experience.
Service learning in the classroom can take many different forms, and can range from helping low-income community members with their taxes to working with a city to develop a long term architectural plan. Below are a few examples of the kind of service learning courses that have been offered at MSU.
I & ME 413: Ergonomics & Human Factors Engineering I
MSU faculty member Laura Stanly teamed with REACH Inc. to create a unique opportunity for students. While striving to fulfill REACH Inc.’s goals to empower their clients by increasing “enjoyment of everyday accomplishments, and independence through work and self-sufficiency”. Thus typical goals of the student designs were to increase independence while performing a task; to make a specific task accessible to a client who was unable to perform it; and/or to improve group work among clients by increasing coordination of the tasks between the individuals. More information can be found here.
FRCH 323: Advanced Grammar and Composition
Dr. Giusti and her students in FRCH 323 worked with Michael Kevane, the West African Director for Friends of African Village Libraries, and Hawa Coulibaly, Head of the Women’s Association of Sanambélé in the West African nation of Mali. As a part of this course, students applied their knowledge of French grammar and improved their French writing skills by translating documents for two NGOs that serve francophone rural African communities. In addition, the students developed two French-language websites: Friends of African Libraries which promotes the creation of village libraries and literacy in Burkine Faso, and Mothers Against Malaria in Africa, which supports a grassroots women’s enterprise in Mali. This service learning experience exposed the students to an extensive set of unfamiliar vocabulary terms thus providing students with a unique opportunity, while at the same time it gave these two non-profit organizations the means to share their mission’s and garner support for their very worthwhile community efforts with the English speaking world.
