Colleagues, for those of you who are struggling with the issue of "reporting
lines", I would suggest that you begin with the NSEE book, Strengthening
Experiential Education Within Your Institution. Jane Kendall and her
colleagues, several of whom now hold senior level administrative positions
in higher education, explored the issues and gave us a foundation upon which
to pursue these questions. At the core is the question of whether
Service-Learning can ever be fully institutionalized unless it is integrated
closely with the central mission of the institution, namely its academic
focus. Some of us are fortunate, I think, to have inherited programs and
positions where service-learning was seen as intrinsically a part of the
educational program, where faculty and/or academic deans and departments
valued experiential learning. In our case at Augsburg, my predecessor was a
Sociology professor who initiated campus wide service-learning internship
programs in the late 60's and complementary off campus urban studies
programs with social change/community based internships as core elements,
i.e., HECUA. As Kendal, Duley, Little, Permaul, and Rubin recommended,
every institution really needs to start with its own mission and do
"institution building" and organizational change/adaptation that fully
integrates faculty and the curriculum into the organizational/personnel
realities. Ten year ago, when we had faculty SIG meetings at NSEE, you
could fit us into a closet. Now with the work of NSEE's campus consulting
[impacting over 500 campuses] and the work of Campus Compact, the Invisible
College, COOL, AAHE and so many other organizations, it would seem that the
academic legitimation for EE and Service-Learning has taken a quantum leap.
Virtually every campus now seems to have a critical mass of faculty who have
discovered the power of experiential learning through a variety of means,
including service-learning. I would start with that core faculty,
especially mobilizing the senior faculty who are "freer" from tenure and
promotion constraints [but by no means only senior faculty]. Create a local
task force to address the "reporting issue" with all the key stakeholders,
focusing on how service-learning and all EE fits into the educational
mission of the college. [Pardon the "self-serving reference", but I have
tried to deal with some of these issues in the 2nd issue of the Michigan
Journal of Community Service Learning and with Suzanne in the "Good
Practices" chapter in Barb Jacoby's Service-Learning in Higher Education
where you will also find excellent chapters on this subject by Sharon Rubin,
Keith Morton, et al].
Best wishes and shalom,
Garry
Garry Hesser
Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies &
Director of Experiential Education
Augsburg College
2211 Riverside Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55454
612-330-1664; fax: 612-330-1784; home: 612-721-4905
hesser@augsburg.edu