Training, Education & Reflection
Strategy • Background • Available Resources
Strategy
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Over the course of four years, undergraduate students in the Bonner Program are involved developmentally, taking on increasingly sophisticated roles within their semester and school year engagement within communities, as well as through leadership roles in the program and on campus. To support this, programs create well-developed meeting calendars, scaffolding training, education, and reflection.
These meetings (and courses for many) support students in their four-year Bonner Student Development, culminating in a capstone-level project that integrates their academic, career, and personal interests and commitments. Intentional workshops provide a sequenced, progressive exploration of the skills, knowledge, values, and competencies needed for Bonner service work in local communities and beyond.
To support Bonner Programs to strengthen their education, training, and reflection calendar, the Foundation has created an extensive library of interactive, intentional workshops. Each of these support specific learning outcomes, pictured above. To define and assess student learning, Foundation resources have incorporated rubrics (from AAC&U and NACE) into both qualitative and quantitative strategies to assess program implementation and student impact.
BACKGROUND
The Foundation has defined ten student learning outcomes for the Bonner Program, which speak to the knowledge, skills, and attributes needed to engage in social change.
Bonners develop these through an on-going series of structured and unstructured experiences:
Curricular Experiences: Bonner meetings, retreats, community-based learning courses, and/or certificate programs/minors in civic engagement-related topics;
Co-Curricular Experiences: Cornerstone activities such as the First Year Service Trip, Sophomore Exchange, and Junior/Senior Capstone/Capacity-building Projects;
Integrative Experiences: Weekly school year service and full-time summer service internships.
The Bonner Developmental Progression (the chart below) reflects the ambitious pathway, Bonners are pursuing in their four years in the program.
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EIGHT THEMES FOR STUDENT LEARNING
Programs are able to acccess a full set of curricular resources related to each of the eight themes, one for each of the eight semesters. By strategically building in meetings that support a set of competencies tied to the Bonner Student Development framework, these training modules enhance students' learning and project work off campus, encourage a sense of belonging, promote accountability, foster campus-wide and community connections, and lead to high levels of retention and graduation. Below is more information about the structure of the 8-themes and its importance.
First Year
Bonner Scholars and Leaders are expected to be willing to learn about and learn from the community (local, national, and global). The two themes for the first year provide education and exposure to key concepts for effective community engagement.
Through workshops in Semester 1, students learn how to Explore Identity and Place, engaging in getting to know themselves, the local community, and their peers.
In Semester 2, Moving from Service to Solutions workshops guide students to think more critically about their service work, its root causes, and potential solutions. Through meetings around themes, students gain aptitudes to work productively with people who are different from them and to identify and implement effective strategies to improve the wellbeing of individuals and families, the environment, and communities.
Second Year
By the beginning of their second year, Bonners have developed a better understanding of their respective service sites, community assets, and issues.
The Leading Teams modules prepare students to work on leadership skills, including but not limited to communication, organization, planning etc. During this time, they build strong relationships, begin to mobilize peers on campus, and work with partner sites to go deeper in understanding root causes of an issue and potential solutions.
Knowing Your Issue modules guide students in narrowing down an issue, researching existing programs and policies around the issue, and preparing Policy Brief.
Third Year
By the third year, students take on expanded leadership roles and responsibilities both on campus and in the community.
The modules on Planning and Managing Projects build students’ skills in conducting stockholder analysis, risk analysis, plan development and implementation, and evaluation, which are crucial elements of managing projects effectively.
The modules on Building Organizational Capacity expose students to a framework on how to build organizational capacity and prepare students to take on more sophisticated challenges in their service, including projects like volunteer management and organizational development, curriculum and training development, program development, fundraising, research, communications, and more.
Fourth Year
As students move toward their senior year, they are guided to reflect back and integrate their learning across their Bonner Program and college experiences.
The modules on Transitioning from College to Career guide students in identifying potential post-graduate pathways, improving their resume, practicing interviewing, and completing their capstone project.
Based on Living Civically-Engaged Lives modules, students learn how to formally transition the leadership of their project and site work to another student leader and prepare a cumulative Presentation of Learning to share with younger peers, campus-wide and community audiences. They also focus on their own successful post-graduate transitions, such as through financial literacy, budgeting, and wellness. As each Bonner Program celebrates its graduates each spring, they also mark how its students have made a lasting difference on campus and in the community.
Since developing the curriculum in 2018, we have incorporated calendar examples and feedback from participating schools, revising the scope and sequence of the 8-themes curriculum for stronger alignment between the Bonner Student Development model and the curriculum.
Available Resources
The Foundation recently launched the online Bonner Learning Community, which would facilitate on-going dialogue and resource sharing among the Bonner Program staff and student leaders. The platform will also allow us to offer online workshops on a wide range of topics, further extending the support the Foundation can provide our campuses.
You can access the Bonner Foundation’s collection of training modules on 8-themes, Capstone series, Common Commitments, Community Engagement Skills, and a large number of other structured curriculum guides on the Bonner Wiki.