Cross Training - Service Learning

Cross Training - Service Learning

A fundamental step in the educational process comes when students bridge the gulf between knowledge and understanding.

As Tom Burzycki, adjunct professor of business explains it, "Knowledge does not equal understanding. For example, think about the word ‘riot.’ You "know" what the word means, but unless you have been in the middle of one, you can’t really understand it. Then after you have experienced it, and try to explain what it is like to someone else, words just don’t do it justice."

A former CEO for a major manufacturing company, Professor Burzycki has spent much of his life in the middle of the corporate world—mergers, acquisitions, divestures, strategic planning, public stock and registered debt offerings, financing, and the daily rigors of running companies. "True understanding only comes with experience. The thing that makes our educational approach at Holy Cross so superior," Tom says, "is that, in a controlled way, we help our students get into the middle of things so that their knowledge leads to understanding."

In some professions like the military, skilled trades, or medicine, the transition from knowledge to understanding is carefully controlled. Students graduate into the lower ranks of their professions and work through apprenticeships serving a mentor, master craftsman, senior officer or physician. This process teaches humility and promotes competence as it leads young people from the inherent narcissism of youth, wanting all the reward for themselves, to the mature role of accepting responsibility and sharing the rewards of work with their group, their family, their customers and their society.

Uniquely, Holy Cross College requires four experiential programs before graduation. One of these four experiential programs is the Service Learning Experience (the others are the Global Perspectives Experience, the Internship and the Capstone Presentation). For many college graduates, the transition from knowledge to understanding or theory to practice is woefully abrupt. Young graduates are plunked into the real world, destined to learn hard lessons and sink or swim in corporate environments.

"We want our graduates to be ready for the real world. Not simply trained in a specific skill, but ready because they have already solved real-world problems and gained the confidence that comes from accomplishing difficult tasks outside the classroom. We want them to apply their liberal arts book learning in a very practical, get-your-hands-dirty fashion. Service opportunities provide a means to do this as well as serve a greater good." says Justin Watson, PhD, Dean of Faculty.

What is Service Learning?

The concept of service learning is not new. In the past twenty years, US educators have made attempts, with varied success, to make service learning opportunities more prominent in the educational system.

The National Commission on Service Learning is a government program that studies and promotes the issue and is headed by Senator John Glenn.

According to the commission, the benefits of service learning* are many, it:

Service learning is often equated with volunteerism which is a growing trend on many college campuses and in society in general. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 60 million Americans donated an average of 52 hours in activities like fundraising, coaching, teaching, serving food, providing information, and general labor in 2006. Volunteering has even become a social activity for many college students. Volunteer trips during Spring Break are a welcome alternative to the popular raids on Ft. Lauderdale. Some students prefer to clean beaches, than lay on them. They still enjoy the weather and meet new friends, but they feel good about the time they’ve spent and don’t wake up with hangovers.

Service learning is often wrongly associated with punitive "community service" programs where teen offenders or traffic violators for example, are forced by authorities to perform a certain number of service hours to pay for their crimes.

However, where service learning differs from either of these is in the classroom component where an opportunity for formal reflection and analysis helps transform the experience. For example, a science class may clean a beach to serve the community. It only becomes service learning if they also conduct basic ecological research. By analyzing what they find, they can answer such questions as: What does the flotsam on a beach say about the ecology of the water system? What is the weight of the trash collected divided by the number of beach visitors? What are the most common components of beach trash and are there biodegradable alternatives? How does human behavior on the beach affect the wildlife? Are humans causing a negative impact on the beach, and what can be done about it? In such a teaching environment, service is neither altruistic, social, nor punitive, but a valuable tool to promote understanding.

Service as Initiation

At Holy Cross, service learning is both a means to transform knowledge into understanding and an initiation into our Catholic mission. Service is an integral component of the charisms of the Brothers of Holy Cross. In fact, they see their role as educators as a service to God and society. As their founder Blessed Basel Moreau describes it:"With the eyes of faith consider the greatness of the mission and the wonderful amount of good that one can accomplish. And also consider the great reward promised to those who have taught the truth to others and have helped form them into justice: "They will shine eternally in the skies like the stars of the heavens." With the hope of this glory, we must generously complete the Lord’s work."— from the treatise, Christian Education. The theme of the Holy Cross Bachelor of Arts program, "developing the competency to see and the courage to act," is an idea also taken from this treatise. In a way, this theme also succinctly describes the main benefit of service learning.

According to Michael Griffin, Adjunct Professor and Director of the Service Learning Program, "In our theology classes, we view service as an initiation into the way of Jesus. After all, the Christian Gospels are not a set of rules and guidelines, but a narrative of service."

"In other tracts," Griffin continued, "service learning can be an introduction to teaching, business, law, psychology, sociology, science, even art."

Br. Chris Dreyer has led Holy Cross students on service learning experiences across America and across town—from building a home in New Orleans after Katrina, to fixing homes for the elderly in Appalachia, to teaching math and reading on Indian reservations in Montana, to building homes for South Bend residents in the Habitat for Humanity program. "Service learning provides a living laboratory for all the real world skills we want to teach, especially compassion for our fellow man," says Brother Chris.

The Student Experience

"For me service learning started as volunteer work," said Randy Ebreit ’09. "As a junior in high school (at Marian High School in Mishawaka), I volunteered for the Big Brother program as a way to help my community. I found it was a great way to make friends with other socially conscious people and it has taught me a lot about young people. I have always wanted to be a teacher and so by getting to know young kids on an individual basis, I have come to better understand how they think and how they learn. For example, I was surprised to find how short their attention spans are, but that they are very astute at noticing everything that is going on around them. Also, by getting to know the problems these youngsters face, I think I will also be a more empathetic teacher, understanding that there may be more difficult problems in their life than doing homework."

"Ironically," Randy continued, "the Big Brother experience has both reinforced my decision to become a teacher and made me question it. I am definitely better prepared and less likely to be surprised by what I’ll find when I finally do get a teaching job."

Randy’s Big Brother work satisfies his service learning requirement, however, in professor Griffin’s class he has learned to reflect on the experience by talking about it in class and writing research papers. "The class work has forced me to examine and explain my experience to others, and this has made it even more meaningful for me," Randy concluded.

For Nichole Molnar ’09, President of the Social Concerns Committee, the service experience has been a real eye opener. "I grew up in a normal middle class family," Nichole relates. "However, every week when I go to the Take Ten program in South Bend to teach non-violence strategies to 6 and 8 year old inner city kids, I enter a culture that is very different from my own. I hate to admit it, but at first I didn’t enjoy going there. It was hard for me to tell if I was getting through to the kids or making a difference. However, now that I have been doing it for a while, I find that they are learning new, nonviolent ways to relate to each other. I have learned about the problems these children face in their lives, to be more patient with young people, and to remember that change takes time."

According to the head of the Holy Cross Business Major, Tom Burczycki, "Every successful business person knows that true service, which is putting the wants and needs of the customer ahead of your own, is the fundamental key to success. While this is an important business lesson, it is also an important lesson seen ‘with the eyes of faith’ in that service is what we Christians are called to do."

"The experiences of service work can also be invaluable for building a resume," says Daniel Haverty director of the center for discernment and Preparation. "A Holy Cross graduate who has gained experience managing volunteers, will have a shorter learning curve when it comes to managing a sales force or a group of office workers. Management skills must be practiced, they can’t simply be learned."

Chantel Albert ’09 is a student who has organized a new service sorority at Holy Cross College called AGI (Alpha Gamma Iota). "AGI is a fun thing for HCC girls to do together, where we can experience the joy of bringing joy to others," she says, "It’s also a great way for commuter students and dorm students to have shared experiences outside the classroom and to develop friendships." Some recent AGI projects have included planting trees and flowering shrubs on campus during Fall Break, running a blanket drive for homeless people of South Bend, and helping to beautify the yard of an elderly woman in need of help in a nearby South Bend neighborhood. "We will also be handing out free hot chocolate and baked goods instead of tailgating at future Notre Dame football games," Chantel added. "People can donate what they want, but we get the joy of putting smiles on their faces as they warm up their hands on a steaming cup of hot chocolate. All donations will go to our future projects."

By organizing, recruiting, and leading this new service sorority, Chantel is developing important skills for future employment. But mostly, she says, she is "making friends, having fun, and helping people."

The Service Learning Experience is a great way for students to put their belief in justice, their desire to be a positive influence on society and the principles of their faith into action. What they get in return is the experience of a lifetime.