Three CSU Campuses Awarded Grants from CA Campus Compact

Three CSU campuses - CSU East Bay, CSU Monterey Bay, and Humboldt State University - have been awarded Partners in Progress (PIP) grants from California Campus Compact. The goal of PIP is to address the needs of California communities by engaging postsecondary institutions to enhance their civic engagement and service-learning programs.

• CSU East Bay (formerly CSU Hayward) will provide two faculty mini-grants for interdisciplinary service-learning courses that meet the needs of the community partner. A faculty project coordinator will facilitate workshops on interdisciplinary service learning and work closely with grantees on course development. Using assessment tools, faculty, students, and community partners will determine whether the interdisciplinary approach more fully meets the needs of the community than discipline specific methods.

• CSU Monterey Bay will train undergraduate student leaders as peer facilitators to lead weekly discussion groups as part of a service-learning and social justice course. Pre- and post-measures of civic self-efficacy and social responsibility will be used to compare student learning outcomes in sections with and without peer-led discussion groups. It is anticipated the project will provide a more intense group experience for service learners and a greater ability for service-learning student leaders to facilitate a connection to the community.

• Humboldt State University faculty will work closely with their community partners to identify the co-educator roles that community partners play in the service-learning experience and determine the structural supports needed for sustained commitment of co-educator relationships. The project includes an assessment of current practices, regional conversations, and expectations of faculty and community partners with regard to co-teaching roles.

Stephanie Brown, service-learning director at San Diego State University, will chair "Aztecs for Rebuilding Lives and Communities," a committee that will help students identify various ways to respond to the Tsunami disaster. The committee's efforts will be to convene a symposium on the nature of global catastrophe, organize a skip-a-meal campaign for the benefit of tsunami victims, and identify community service and service-earning projects that would offer SDSU students hands-on involvement in the affected regions. To read about how other CSU campuses are taking action, read last week’s CSU Leader.