Service Learning

Service learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.  Students become actively contributing citizens and community members through the service they perform. - service learning.org

The modern service learning movement in colleges and universities creates opportunities for students to combine community work with academic perspectives to make higher education more valuable to students and more relevant to the community.

The Service Learning Program (SLP) at Houston Community College is dedicated to promoting and coordinating service learning by HCC students. To this end, the program acts to:

• Disseminate information about community volunteer needs, the value of service learning and service-oriented innovations in curricula.
• Promote campus commitment to community service.
• Aid in securing transcript notation for students completing service learning projects of 20 hours or more.
• Provide a CTLE course on service learning for adjunct and fulltime faculty.

Helping to foster a "culture of service" around the campus brings immediate benefits to the community, the college, students and faculty. Service learning improves retention rates of students, increases their sense of civic responsibility, deepens their understanding of community issues, and creates important networks as they pursue their goals.

The community gains from the unpaid work of service learners, while HCC furthers its outreach objectives. Faculty often finds that community work awakens their students to new perspectives, facilitates dialogue about academic materials, and creates a concrete link between their classrooms and the surrounding community.

We invite you to become involved with this exciting opportunity to combine academic reflection with social practice. 

SLP works to establish partnerships with non-profit organizations, hospitals, schools, and with the community service sections of corporations within the college's service area.

Placement opportunities are available to students enrolled in classes with a community service component and to walk-in students. SLP maintains a searchable database of registered partners.

The program advocates a balanced service-learning approach, meeting the needs of the community while maintaining an academically rigorous campus environment.

For more information or assistance, please contact:

Dr. Betty Fortune
Executive Director, Success & Completion
Department of Success & Completion
713/718-5148 | betty.fortune@hccs.edu

Dr. Pauline Warren
Interim Director, Suppl Instruction
Department of Success & Completion
713/718-8484 | pauline.warren@hccs.edu

Campus Compact
http://www.compact.org/

Journal of Service-Learning in Higher Education (free to subscribe)
http://journals.sfu.ca/jslhe/index.php/jslhe/user/register

National Service-Learning Clearinghouse
http://www.servicelearning.org/