Service Learning at St. Francis College

Kathleen A. Nolan

I just re-read Susan Schenk’s  (1997) report on her service learning project at Claremont College in Claremont, California.  Susan’s project involved students going into elementary school classrooms to teach students about science.  Her students learned responsibility and how to apply what they were learning in the classroom to real situations.  Although our project is a little different, there are some similarities.  Our students usually work part-time while they are in school, so I wrote a grant proposal to try to fund the students to do service learning projects.  We received a grant of $5,000 to incorporate service learning in the curriculum.  The grant program was wildly successful.  Eleven students have been paid $400 each for 40 hours to engage in pilot science-oriented service learning projects. The money gave the students some incentive to “get going” and “get doing”.  They also learned a lot in the process, not just about content, but about being responsible, developing good work habits, learning time management, working with others, and developing better writing skills. 

Each student gained something from their project, and many students are continuing to do related projects, even though the original projects may be finished.  One project that was unexpected was a visit to Dowling College to participate in environmental science poster presentations, and to view posters by high school students.  Inshan, Candice and Mala accompanied me on this trip. We volunteered to help judge the high school posters, and, even though we were too late to do so this year, they invited us to come back and judge next year.  That will be a Service Learning project for next spring.  (This was a great outing, complete with speakers that discussed the environment of Long Island Sound, a clambake, and canoeing!)

Brief descriptions of their projects are listed in Table 1.

Table 1.  Service Learning Project Information

Most of the students who worked in the hospitals volunteered 100 hours of their time.  As they got paid for only 40 hours through the service learning grant, the result was that each student contributed an additional 60 hours to the hospital. The students may have eventually done volunteer work, but the service learning grant gave them a “jump start” to get going with a project. 

The students in the Pathology lab had to register with the volunteer office before they went to work and to agree to give 100 hours of service.  Of course, the students were learning the entire time, also.  They made microscope slides of various tissues, most of which were suspected of being cancerous.  The students observed whole organs and large pieces of tissues that were taken either from autopsies or as biopsies from patients that were currently in the operating room.  They had the opportunity to examine these tissues in the grossing room, and then help make slides of them.  They learned about the preservation of different types of tissues, different stains used to assess various organelles and artifacts in the tissues, how to archive the samples, and how to develop good record keeping skills.   

Since the Pathology lab could only take two students, two other students were disappointed.  However, our persistence in contacting local hospitals paid off. A volunteer coordinator from Methodist Hospital talked the students into volunteering for “Project Contact”.  In this project, the students worked with the families of the patients and the patients themselves, interpreting medical terms and diagnoses for them.  At first, the students experienced trepidation about this project (as did I).  However, after researching the illnesses, they were able to aid the patients in understanding their problem.

Another student decided to do a survey of careers, other than being a physician, in the health field.  She interviewed people at Mt. Sinai Hospital to gain her insights for this task. 

A student who is now a high school biology teacher designed a hand-out that could be used for students visiting the Staten Island Zoo.  It was a very comprehensive list of questions that would take students two hours to finish.  I used this handout for the SFC Summer Science Academy for NYC High School students this summer when we took a trip to the zoo.  Another professor, who teaches math and science techniques course to prospective teachers, used this handout with some of her students last week (October 2002). 

Another project was designed for a student to assist the General Biology lab students with their research projects.  We purchased a digital camera and the project participant helped the lab students photograph their projects.  We then had a Laboratory Open House in which the college community was invited to see the student posters and PowerPoint presentations.  The second project involved this biology major’s summer work with the West Nile Virus project.  He wrote a paper about his work identifying different species of mosquitoes and identifying and collecting larvae. 

Two positions involved shadowing professionals.   One shadowed a pediatrician for several Saturdays.  She kept a log of the patients that she saw with the doctor.  Most of the time the children had routine childhood ailments such as middle ear aches, slight temperatures, or rashes, or were administered vaccines.  It was a good experience for this student to see that being a pediatrician requires a lot of patience, and that it is not always glamorous work. 

What remains to be done?  We are putting on a final luncheon in November, and inviting the college community to come.  The title of the program is “Leadership through Service Learning”.  Several of our Service Learners will speak about their work.  We will also prepare a poster and/or PowerPoint presentation for our open house and education conferences in the metropolitan area. A booklet of the students’ papers will be printed, with a cover page that contains information from Table 1 and contact numbers.  The most important thing that was gained from this experience is that there is a lot of work to be done out there, and there is a lot to be learned from doing this work.  The students are also beginning to learn the value of networking and making everything you do connect to everything else. 

Future endeavors include:

I would like to acknowledge Marilyn Verna, Ph.D.  for her support for this project. 

Literature Cited:

Schenk, S.  1997.  Service learning: a pleasant surprise.  Labstracts 18:2.