FIPSE Grant to Support Civic Education Academic Certificate Program

The Bonner Foundation is the recipient of a three-year grant to create a service-honors program integrating academics and service. The initiative, sponsored in part by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), U.S. Department of Education, seeks to facilitate the quality and intensity of students’ college service experiences while promoting civic engagement on campus and in the community through students’ example and influence.

Five diverse institutions of higher education are part of the primary work-group that will create courses and build a curricular sequence (in the form of a major or certificate) that will become the core of the project.
The work team includes participants from:

• Mars Hill College in North Carolina
• Portland State University
• The College of New Jersey
• University of California-Los Angeles
• Washington and Lee University in Virginia

Each campus has committed to implementing the Civic Education Academic Certificate program at their school during the second and third years of our FIPSE project period.

The initiative would combine academic rigor with co-curricular service activities and leadership and skill-based training. Schools will design an academic curriculum which:

• identifies current courses;
• modifies existing courses; and,
• creates new courses.

A core honors service curriculum will be established, as well as a series of electives that could be completed either in the academic curriculum or through a co-curricular opportunity. Students will be asked to declare a service major which will focus on either a particular issue (domestic hunger, urban housing, rural elementary education, etc.) and identify a service minor based on a skill set (fundraising, public relations, management etc.)

Students will be required to produce and present a senior service thesis, which will serve as a capstone of their cumulative work. Academic achievement and student development will be tracked and documented through a student service portfolio.

Our first objective is to convene a work team to compile resources for a multi-year curriculum that connects students’ service work with their academic growth. Essential in the advancement of this service movement is the creation of a comprehensive and integrated program to support students’ service passions, academic pursuits and career exploration in such a way that they are empowered to do service, think critically, and produce strong academic work connected to their service.

The way a student’s service work supplements their academics must evolve as the student develops and progresses through school. Our strategy is to design a flexible and complimentary academic track that is fully integrated with a student’s service, skills, and leadership development; this tool will complement rather than compete with the academic majors that currently exist at a college.

First Year Course

Many campuses participating in the Bonner Program have developed First Year Bonner courses emphasizing the important connection between students’ service and their academic lives. Our goal is to aggregate the work of current campuses that implement such courses to create a syllabus and publish a reader and database that can be used by any campus interested in developing a multi-year service work-study program connected to academics.

Intensive Year Long Service Placement

At this stage in their service and academic careers, students are asked to choose a service issue (hunger, literacy, etc.) and a skill set that they can develop through a year-long service internship. The goal of the work team will be to compile a reflection series, accessible on the web, that will challenge students to think daily about their service internship in the light of current events, cultural differences, and national and global issues and concerns.

Advanced Seminar

After an intensive year-long service placement, students will participate in a multi-discipline seminar that examines current issues through literature, current events, and public policy. Students will work on group projects that incorporate their academic skills and service experiences by completing a community-based research project that a community partner has requested.

Our work team’s challenge is to develop a curriculum and compile a booklet of current community-based research ideas and make it available on the web for all interested schools and upper level service-learning students.

Senior Service Thesis

Students preparing to graduate will complete a senior service thesis. This thesis will integrate a capstone experience with the co-curricular service activities that a student has performed leading up to his/ her senior year. The work team’s goal will be to compile a list of practical examples and cited resources that administrators/faculty can use when formulating projects.

There has been much talk of creating academic community service majors at colleges and universities across the country. While these initiatives have their merit, we believe that there should be something in between the lone service-learning course and the community service academic major on the landscape of higher education.

This initiative will not have the goal of creating new academic majors. Rather than make students decide between a traditional academic major and community service interest, we hope to enable a student to connect traditional academic majors with service activity both in appropriate, meaningful and powerful ways.