*Please note: The Academic Service-Learning program will be rebuilding this website during fall 2018. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Lori Simons or Dr. Marina Barnett.

Community engaged pedagogies, also referred to service-learning, are teaching and learning strategies that combine academic learning with community service (Elyer & Giles, 1999). Pedagogical sholarship suggests that service-learning impacts student learning in a variety of ways as described below.

Academic Service-Learning

Academic service-learning is an educational experience that unites experiential components, civic engagement, and classroom activities.  As such, the goal of academic service-learning is to enhance the development of each student's sense of civic responsibility while achieving the academic objectives for individual courses or across courses within a curriculum.  Institutional support fosters the linkage of learning, assessing, and applying academic content in meaningful, measurable projects within real community settings.

Service-learning focuses on intentional reciprocity between the student and the community.  Structured reflection on the interplay between academic development and community benefit provides the key to academic service-learning.  Together, reflection and reciprocity allow the academic service-learning experience to benefit the student, the university, and the community.

Faculty Directors:

Lori Simons, PhD, LPC, CCDP-D, CAC-D

  • Practicum and Internship Coordinator of the Psychology Department
  • (610) 499-4602
  • lnsimons@widener.edu
  • Kapelski Learning Center 115B

 

Marina Barnett, MSW, DSW