VCC and UVM Class Put a Spotlight on
Service-Learning Faculty in Vermont

Elizabeth Dolci:
Scientific Research In and For the Community

When the terms microbiology, genetics, biochemistry, cell biology, and introductory biology are all put together they seem a little intimidating, but for Professor Elizabeth Dolci they are anything but! As a cell and molecular biology professor at Johnson State College for 20 years, Dolci has enhanced her love for all of these subjects by passing along her knowledge and enthusiasm for these topics through her courses based on service-learning.

Professor Dolci became interested in community-based learning several years ago when a group of faculty in her department developed a collaborative research project investigating the Lamoille River watershed to explore the geology, ecology, biology, chemistry, and climatology of this ecosystem.

Dolci’s research on this project investigates the health of microbial communities – bacteria - in aquatic environments at the Vermont Asbestos Group mine in Lowell/Eden, Vermont. She integrates community-based learning into this research project because, “in several of my upper level courses, the class will carry out a group research project on one aspect of my project. For example, in genetics next semester students will investigate the effects of asbestos mine tailings on the growth of yeast. In microbiology next fall, students will assist in culturing and identifying microorganisms present in the mine’s pit pond.  Students also work with me on this project as part of their senior research theses.”

When asked why she prefers a service-learning environment to a traditional classroom education, Dolci said quite simply, “Research is integral to learning science, and the best way of learning to do research is to work side-by-side with a research scientist. A comprehensive undergraduate education in biology must incorporate a genuine research experience for the student.”

But service-learning doesn’t just benefit the student, it benefits all parties involved, including the faculty and community partner as well! The goal of the project is to provide data to make more informed decisions that may impact the human population, influence public policy, and change social attitudes. It will also produce collaborations with local schools, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, and other state/local agencies as appropriate.

Her advice to her fellow educators? Get involved no matter what. “Start small and establish a project that directly impacts the local community as this usually generates student interest.” Without a doubt, she adds, “incorporating an authentic research experience in classroom learning is the most exciting aspect for me!” Click here to go back to profile list.

Christie  Herbert:
Seeing Beyond the Classroom

At Landmark College in Putney, Professor Christie Herbert has much experience in seeing the potential in something that has not yet materialized. In addition to her role as Associate Professor of Education, she teaches courses in ceramics where she encourages students to use creative self-expression to build confidence, create art, and engage the community.  Each year, Professor Herbert coordinates an Empty Bowl dinner to raise money for the local homeless shelter and involves potters in the community as well as Landmark students to help make pots and run the dinner on campus.  This year - their 8th year - they raised $26,000.
 
Transferring some of these same creative concepts into her service- learning education class, Herbert develops community-based experiences for her education students, which in turn gives them the tools to craft meaningful and fulfilling learning experiences for themselves and local middle school students.  Herbert runs a mentoring program in partnership with local middle schools where students are assigned a middle school student with a learning difference. It is the college student’s responsibility to plan mentoring activities for the middle school child every week for their time on the Landmark campus. The Landmark students, many of whom have ADHD, ASD or other learning disabilities, have to channel their creativity in order to plan an activity that will stimulate, engage, and most importantly, teach the children.  After 12 years of doing the program, mentees have reported that their Landmark mentoring experience was pivotal in helping them consider attending college.

The relationship benefits the mentees as well as the mentors, Herbert believes, just as there is reciprocity for students and community with the ceramics projects.   She feels that the college experience can make students feel “detached from the real world”. Her goal is to remind her students how beneficial their work can be, not only for their personal education but to the community.

 Herbert has been an educator for over 30 years, and has her bachelor’s degree in Literature from Reed College and a Masters of Art in Teaching from the School for International Training. She is also currently working towards a Masters in Fine Arts in Visual Studies from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

 “I view my fundamental role as a teacher to prepare students to be engaged with the world, and to be of use,” she declares.  Her proudest moment is when a student graduates and continues their work with students with learning differences.  It is proof that by bringing students outside of the classroom, they can discover their calling and find true inspiration. When such enlightenment happens, we can often credit a dedicated professor – in this case, Christie Herbert. Click here to go back to profile list. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Miriam Horne:
Discovering a New World

Most of the world is not lucky enough to live in Vermont. As we watch a beautiful sunset over Lake Champlain we may sometimes forget how the rest of the world lives. Miriam Horne, assistant professor at Champlain College, attempts to remedy this through the social justice concepts she develops in her Human Rights and Responsibilities course at Champlain. 

Every spring break Prof. Horne accompanies a group of students to Nicaragua in order to work with the service organization known as “Compas de Nicaragua.”  Before the class leaves Burlington, they engage in discussions and activities on the poverty and human rights issues faced in Nicaraguan society.  Analysis of social, cultural, political, and religious perspectives come together in class, while students contemplate their own purpose as outsiders arriving to provide service in the community.

Upon arrival the students assist Compas de Nicaragua with any current work with which they are involved.  This work ranges from participating in building and painting houses, working on bio-gas systems, and assisting women's organizations. The intended outcomes of these activities are to assist Compas de Nicaragua in serving its clients in an impoverished area of Managua and help Champlain students connect to and develop an understanding of the Nicaraguan community. This head-first dive into Nicaraguan culture provides the students with a new framework of how to understand human rights and social justice. 

Students work on writing assignments throughout the process allowing them to interpret and internalize the lessons they learn during their field work.  This experience shapes their view of their classes in the following semesters and beyond.  The people they meet and stories they hear provide the students with a solid introduction to international human rights, real-world learning far from of the realm of maple syrup and fall foliage. 

Prof. Horne gives credit to Champlain College’s civic engagement office for helping her to provide this exceptional academic experience for her students, noting that the trip “would not have been possible without the support and participation of Champlain’s Center for Service and Civic Engagement… As I’ve come to learn more about service-learning, I’ve come to understand how critical it is that there be strong connections between offices like these and the classroom.”  Click here to go back to profile list. 

Nadia Horning:
Committed to Thinking Globally by Acting Locally

 What do courses in comparative politics, African politics, natural resource management, and political leadership have in common?  They are all courses taught by Nadia Horning, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College, and a strong advocate for service learning-based class work. As a scholar of African politics and natural resource management, Professor Horning has been integrating service-learning into her classroom and coursework since 2007.

Horning requires students in her senior seminar in African government to participate in 10 hours of volunteer work with the Association of Africans Living in Vermont (AALV) or The Sudan Development Foundation (SUDEF). She also has taken students in her Local Green Politics course to nearby Ripton Elementary School where they read plays and stories about sustainable resource management to children from Kindergarten to 6th grade.

Why does she choose to include service-learning?  “It’s important for students to put faces on phenomena that we study and discuss in class by interacting with people affected by dislocations of various causes,” she explains. “It is also important for refugees, especially the youth, to realize that there is a broad community of support for them and that there are opportunities to go to college not too far from where they have settled down.”

 Horning clearly believes that service-learning positively affects everyone who is involved. She described that, “over the years I have discovered that volunteering has provided good professional experience to my students. It is also a powerful community builder among classmates. This is an effective way for my students to translate difficult concepts such as sustainable resource management or common-pool resources into language accessible to very young people. Overall it’s an invaluable eye opener for all involved.”

Horning stays excited about service-learning because it enriches the collective academic experience without taking anything from the conventional classroom experience. “Students must be prepared to handle excitement and face disappointment and uncertainty; it’s up to their teachers to guide them through an unusual, sometimes messy, process,” she concedes, “but service-learning is critical to helping students become independent learners and making a rich experience even richer for all involved.” Click here to go back to profile list. 

Pamela Monder:
Raising the Bar on College Education

Pamela Monder stumbled into her calling as a service-learning professor during her previous career as Education Director at the Chaffee Art Center in Rutland, VT.  Her goal was to engage students in an activity that would get them out of the traditional art classroom and broaden their horizons to the benefits that hard work and commitment can have not only on themselves, but a community.   The project was to refurbish a park in downtown Rutland, Vermont. She didn’t feel a fancy “service -learning” title was necessary for her course. “I just wanted my students to do meaningful  and useful projects and presentations,” she recalls. The success of that first endeavor inspired her to create her next service-learning project at the Community College of Vermont (CCV), incorporating a blood drive into her lesson plan for her Vampires in Literature, Culture and Film course.

Flash forward to today:  Monder is currently in her sixth year as an instructor at CCV where she teaches the freshman seminar, graduation capstone course, and  English, Literature, Spanish and Humanities courses. She continues to channel her creativity into enhancing her students’ learning experiences. She has partnered her students with a local women's shelter, Pure Water for the World, the Red Cross, local elementary schools, city agencies and other nonprofit organizations. She is an excellent example of how passion and dedication to education can make a class unique, fulfilling, and truly educational.

For Monder, the benefit of these courses is to see the students excel in hands- on experiences. So far, the biggest benefit is the emergence of leadership skills. Students may not know what they are capable of until they are given the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in real-life situations. The skills they learn in Monder’s classes can be directly transferred into their everyday lives, which is what inspires her to continue her work with service-learning projects. Acknowledging that every project is different and will have unique challenges is what motivates Monder to continue providing such a distinct learning experience.  “Not every project attempt will turn out as we envision; the best we can do is set the bar high and hope that students see the value in trying to reach it.” Click here to go back to profile list. 

Shelly Rayback:
A Class You Can Count On

           
Some of the best lessons are learned outside of the classroom.  This is the thinking behind University of Vermont Professor Shelly Rayback's 200 Level dendrochronology (the science of dating events and variations in the environment through the study of rings in trees) class. Dr. Rayback, an Assistant Professor of Geography, had her class partner with the Vermont chapter of The Nature Conservancy, a national organization committed to the protection of nature and threatened habitats.  The students participated in field work at the LaPlatte River Nature Reserve in nearby Shelburne, Vermont.  Their field work involved using dendrochronological techniques to determine the age of the forest stand and to link the development of the forest with major flooding events on Lake Champlain.  The students also conducted historical research to discover who owned the land and how was the land used in the late 1800s and early 1900s before The Nature Conservancy acquired the property. 

This mixture of historical and scientific work was set up in progressive stages with the final product consisting of a scientific report, an oral presentation and a film.  The final report, submitted by the students to The Nature Conservancy, helped to construct a past and present identity of the forest. 

 Professor Rayback's class gave the students an opportunity to practice different field and lab techniques within the framework of the class, as well as to apply concepts learned in class.  She explains, “I wanted the students to have an 'ah-ha!' moment in which the information that is learned in class comes to fruition in the real world.”  The field work coupled with the lab analysis enabled the students to practice their skills in a low stakes environment.  Partnering with the Nature Conservancy allowed the students to take on the responsibility of working with a community partner and submit their work to an organization that will use their research in future decision making capacities.  

Everyone involved in the partnership benefitted; the Nature Conservancy gained invaluable knowledge from the students' research, the students were able to the give back to the community that supported them through their university career, and Professor Rayback enjoyed her work so much she is currently applying for a grant for a larger dendrochronology-based research project incorporating service-learning where students will apply skills and knowledge learned in her dendrochronology class to a project in cooperation with The Nature Conservancy of Vermont and Maine. Click here to go back to profile list. 

Thomas Redden:
Engaging the Right Brain

“Experiential education is very powerful,” declares Southern Vermont College History and Politics Professor Thomas Redden. “There is no question that most students learn more by doing than by taking notes.”
In Dr. Redden’s popular service-learning course, which is part of SVC’s “Quest for Success” program, first-year students have plenty of exposure to hands-on learning.
Unlike in a traditional research course, students are able to work with and reflect upon their experiences with a variety of community partners that range from the Vermont Veterans Home to Bennington Project Independence (BPI).

For the fall semester of 2011, Dr. Redden’s students were able to tie theory into practice with regular visits to local senior centers, where many of the community folks are usually single and relatively alone in the world. The students, he believes, provide a “breath of fresh air for them.” During visits to the senior centers, students actively interacted, socialized, and provided company to the seniors.  Through these frequent visits, both the seniors and the students were able to learn about each other. For one class assignment, the students wrote biographies of the seniors with whom they interacted. These interactions were considered a reciprocal learning activity as both parties involved were exposed to the differences between generations.

Dr. Redden ensures that his students and the community partners receive mutual benefits through constant dialogue and engagement at both ends.  “When the students are engaged and express appreciation for the opportunities to work with community folks, then I know that [they] are learning,” he explains. “Needless to say, that is the idea.”

Overall, Dr. Redden’s goals for his class consisted of having his students develop meaningful relationships with senior citizens, be able to learn and look more deeply into the life story of a senior who is not a relative, and “to be able to reflect upon their own lives and generation in order to appreciate what they have in their own lives.”

Dr. Redden believes that his hands-on learning approach is especially relevant to the SVC campus, where he has taught for over 12 years. “Most of our students at SVC tend to be predominantly ‘right-brain’ learners,” he explains.  “While we are always trying to develop their “left-brain” skills as well, such as note-taking and critical thinking, the fact is that their learning style is more doing than thinking about it, so we need to make the most of that fact.” Click here to go back to profile list. 

Patricia Shine:
Applying Theory; Making Change

Professor Shine’s motivation for teaching a service-learning course comes from her desire for students to see themselves as change agents in their communities. She explains, “Students learn best by doing. Learning how to be an activist or an advocate doesn’t happen in the classroom.” Professor Shine has been teaching human services at Lyndon State College for the past nine years. Much of her teaching is influenced by her previous work as a practitioner in the field of social work and the importance of applying theory in the classroom to real-life situations.

Five years ago, she attended a seminar on Problem-Based Service-Learning hosted by Vermont Campus Compact. It was here that she developed her current course, Macro Perspectives in Human Services. The course is meant to help students understand the broad scope of communities and systems as related to the human services field. Students work in groups throughout the semester and reflect on the connections between their projects and the theories presented in their readings.  Professor Shine explains that these reflections and the processing of how to work in groups are two areas where they spend a lot of time and learn a great deal.

The community partners that Professor Shine has collaborated with vary each year, from organizations such as the Vermont Worker’s Center to the Counseling Center on Lyndon State’s campus. Each year, she works closely with the community partner before the class begins to brainstorm a project that is realistic within a semester-long timeline and that fills a real gap for the organization. “I like to be of use,” she says.  While students are graded on their process rather than their final project, the end results are often of very high quality because students connect with the partners and really take ownership of their work.  

Professor Shine believes that much of her success comes from the time she puts in building relationships with community partners. She advises other educators that “any prep work that you can do before the class begins is time well spent. She acknowledges that this takes a lot of work but firmly states, “the benefits are so worth it.”Click here to go back to profile list. 

John Zaber:
Keep it Real

Although diverse populations are becoming increasingly visible in Burlington and other areas of Vermont, diversity in the Northeast Kingdom is often less visible. John Zaber, faculty member in the applied and social sciences at Sterling College in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, attempts to engage his students and individuals from these often hidden cultures in northern Vermont in order to broaden horizons and open minds.        

Professor Zaber explains, “My philosophy is 'keep it real.' So my Education and Culture class visits local migrant farm workers to obtain firsthand experience of a hidden culture in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. During our visits we listen to the farmer’s stories of their travels to Vermont, the nature of their present lives, and future hopes and dreams. As an extension of this class, students (and the greater Craftsbury community) also interact with farmworkers through community tamale dinners, music and game nights, and contra dances.”  In turn the farm workers learn more about American culture and higher education from the Sterling students.   Relationships are forged between the students and the members of the farmworker community as the students provide welcome respite from the daily demands of milking cows. From game nights to tamale dinners, these two groups learn to trust and share with one another while learning from their differences. 

Other experiences range from exploring experiential approaches to education via the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps to investigating the educational systems of local prisons. An exploration of the Community High School (Vermont’s Department of Corrections high school) allows Sterling students to interact with inmates, to hear their life stories, and to discuss the cultural implications of our judicial system.  “This face to face interaction puts a name to the anonymous faces of prisoners and encourages my students to ponder the high rate of incarceration in this country.”  All of these different projects are meant to give the students a new glimpse of their community, encouraging them to discover and analyze these cultures within the context of Vermont as a whole.

The comprehensive nature of Professor Zaber's Education and Culture class goes beyond reading statistics in a book.  From interacting with the farmworker and prison cultures students explore our cultural assumptions regarding these two populations and learn that cultural understanding can be complex and thought provoking.

 “The exchanges that I have with my students in passing become an extension of the classroom and demonstrate, for me, that students are thinking outside the class and really making connections.”  By connecting to other cultures, the students discover and rediscover their worldview about where and what Vermont really is.  And in turn, they help to enrich the cultural landscape of Vermont.  Click here to go back to profile list.