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April 2016
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UWI staff and students were broken up into groups facilitated by Louisville University staff to discuss ways that community engagement could be implemented at the St. Augustine Campus. Practical applications of volunteerism on the campus were brought up, such as tutoring children affected by HIV at the Cyril Ross Home, Habitat for Humanity and outreach to animal welfare groups such as the El Socorro Wildlife Centre. It was also mentioned that students from the Faculty of Medical Sciences and Engineering already do projects to help provide solutions for community projects, however there was a greater need to streamline service-learning across the curriculum. The differences between the US and Caribbean curricula were also discussed as a possible deterrent for service-learning since in the Caribbean system, undergraduate students traditionally take three years as compared with four years in US-based schools and there are no semester breaks, so “Spring Break” service-learning options would not be feasible. Faculty and SLDD representatives stressed that they were excited for service-learning to be integrated into the curriculum and they would work hard to provide resources for educators such as a database of related non-profit organisations to help them create syllabi with service-learning components. Overall, the desire to give back to the community was seen as the driving force behind service-learning for everyone in attendance and in the words of a Louisville student who gave her time to her local firefighting department and now works there full-time, “once students try it, they will love it.” (Jeanette Awai) |
On March 17, the Division of Student Services and Development (SLDD) presented a Roundtable Discussion on Service Learning and Community Engagement with staff and students from the University of Louisville, Kentucky as well as other southern state universities in the US.