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Home > Archive > Jul 12, 2007

Learning Through Service at DSC
By Cami Cox
Staff Writer
Students are gaining more than academic knowledge in the classrooms of Dixie State College. Since 2004, DSC has been implementing service learning on campus, encouraging students to get out into the community and serve others in conjunction with their academic studies. In the coming year, service learning will continue as students help out in the local community as part of their required coursework.
“It enhances learning in the classroom,” Dr. Thomas McNeilis, professor of biology at DSC, said. “They really get to see what it's like out in the real world, not just the college atmosphere.”
McNeilis is one of several Dixie State professors who have voluntarily taken on service learning as part of the required curriculum in their classrooms. In addition to regular coursework, students enrolled in service learning classes like McNeilis' are required to perform community service outside of class throughout the semester.
McNeilis' students conduct a variety of service projects relating to their class work, from volunteering at the Doctors' Free Clinic to working with handicapped children. The process of serving others not only broadens students' horizons, McNeilis said, but it also supplements their learning and prepares them for real life and careers in a way that studying from books can't. And though it isn't the focus of service learning, volunteering in the community also helps students build their resumes, preparing them for the eventual pursuit of their advanced degrees.
“To get into medical school, you have to have at least a minimum of 480 service hours,” McNeilis said. “That's just the minimum requirement. What they're trying to do nowadays is make sure that people going into medical school really want to be there.”
McNeilis has been active in serving others throughout his lifetime, as have many of the other service learning teachers at DSC. It is their own volunteerism experiences that are the driving force for these teachers as they involve their students in service learning.
“Faculty who themselves volunteer on their own time are more likely to participate in service learning,” DSC associate professor and faculty coordinator of service Candace Mesa said. “Isn't it great? Service is completely voluntary!”
Because implementing service learning in their classrooms is not a requirement for the professors, nor do they receive any sort of additional compensation for it, those who elect to sign on do so because they are passionate about service and want their students to get excited about it, too.
“It's been proven that doing volunteerism actually leads to happiness,” Mesa said. “When you can get 19-year-olds to look outside of themselves, they can do wonderful things.”
Service learning classes are designated as such in the DSC course catalog, so when students sign up, they know they are taking a service learning course and that additional effort will be required of them. Students enrolled in service learning must perform a certain number of service hours throughout the semester (typically eight to 10); they must create what Mesa calls a reflective component, wherein they compose essays, formulate presentations, or create posters about their service learning experiences; and they must perform service that relates to their class work in some way. Some students in McNeilis' service learning class, for example, worked with handicapped children for their service projects, which coincided with subjects they were studying in class.
“When we talked about genetics and so forth, they got to see genetic anomalies in the real world,” McNeilis said.
DSC English professor Sue Bennett partnered with local mentoring agency Big Brothers Big Sisters for her class' service learning project. Students learned about the agency and helped with activities and fundraisers for Big Brothers Big Sisters throughout the semester. To relate the service to their coursework, Bennett required the students to write their end-of-term research papers about the experience.
Many professors integrate volunteerism into their classrooms and encourage students to participate in community service without formally calling it service learning, Mesa said. From allowing local charity organizations to give in-class presentations to the students to giving their pupils extra points for volunteering, many DSC professors are doing their part to encourage service.
A great deal of volunteerism also takes place at the campus outside of service learning, Mesa said. A component of DSC's student government organization deals with volunteering and involving students in performing good deeds for others.
Annie Wittwer, a student at DSC, is the vice president of the campus service club under the student government umbrella. Even though it's their summer vacation, she and other members of the service club committee have been hard at work, gearing up for the coming semester's schedule of service events.
“This year, I really want to step up. I want to get students involved in the community,” Wittwer said.
Among plans she has in mind, Wittwer intends to organize an “alternate spring break” for Dixie students in the upcoming year. In place of personal vacations and fun in the sun, participating students will spend their spring breaks serving at an orphanage in Mexico. Wittwer said she hopes the experience will inspire students to continue volunteering throughout their lives and also teach them the true joy that comes from serving others.
“Personally, I know what it feels like to be down; then to go out and serve, you feel so much better,” she said.
Wittwer and Mesa are both looking forward to a new campus service center scheduled to open sometime in the fall, which will operate as a sort of networking hub for students and local charity groups. Through the service center, students will be able to find volunteer opportunities that fit their interests, and local charity organizations will be able to get the word out to potential volunteers about the work they do. Most of the other college campuses in the state already have such service centers in place, Mesa said.
“This is sort of a dream in the making,” she said.

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