“The Dance of Change” in an English Department: A Service Learning Case Study

Authors

  • William Carney Cameron University
  • Kaitlyn Stockton University of North Texas

Keywords:

internship, service learning, course design

Abstract

Thebenefits of service learning (SL) in college courses have been well-documented.Evangelopoulos, Sidorova, & Riolli (2003) have demonstrated, for example,that students in courses with an SL component report greater satisfaction withthose courses than they do in traditional courses with similar content. Thepresent article describes a multi-disciplinary SL project at a small publicuniversity in southwestern Oklahoma. The authors, a professor and a graduatestudent (who was a participant in the project as an undergraduate), describehow the service learning project and insights derived from Senge (1999) createdstudent interest in an English department and garnered institutional supportfor similar endeavors. The article also describes the challenges faced inkeeping SL projects relevant and useful for future students as well as thechallenges involved in making such projects more “transformational†forstudents in the humanities disciplines. As the humanities places a value oncritical inquiry, SL projects must be designed in such a way as to encouragesocial and institutional critique along with instruction in workplaceskills.

Author Biographies

William Carney, Cameron University

Associate ProfessorDirector of CompositionDepartment of English and Foreign Languages

Kaitlyn Stockton, University of North Texas

Graduate StudentUniversity of North Texas

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Published

2014-10-15

How to Cite

Carney, W., & Stockton, K. (2014). “The Dance of Change” in an English Department: A Service Learning Case Study. Asian Journal of Education and E-Learning, 2(5). Retrieved from https://www.ajouronline.com/index.php/AJEEL/article/view/1685