Students see Value in Community Engaged Learning

 by Margaret Groarke

In 2019-20, we added a question about community engaged learning to the course and teacher evaluation survey for classes that were defined as community engaged learning. As you can see in the attached brief report, the great majority of students responded positively to CEL, saying it helped them learn the course material, gave them real world experience, changed their perspective, and otherwise was a valuable experience. 

In Fall 2019, 73% of the responses were positive. The most common categories of positive responses were: 

• Helped me understand course content (37 responses)

• Gave me real world experience (16 responses)

• Helped me understand importance of community engagement (14)

• Learned about issues and/or community (13)

• I enjoyed it (13)

• Chance to give back (10)

• Changed my perspective (10)

Many students said, in many different ways, that their community experiences made them think about things differently. One example: “Volunteering with homeless women changed my perspective on life in general because it made a huge impact on me and allowed me to realize how fortunate I am. I am very grateful for the experience.” 

In upper-level classes, students were more likely to be utilizing advanced skills they had developed, and connected their community service to their future careers. A COMM major reported: “I found this particularly rewarding to work for an actual client and complete a pitch simulation. Not only did it give our group an incentive to work extra hard, but we also were able to see what a future career in PR could potentially look like. I loved this aspect of the course.”

Kudos to the faculty who worked so hard to make these extraordinary learning experiences possible for our students. Anyone interested in developing a community engaged learning course can reach out to Dr. Margaret Groarke or Kathleen Von Euw for more information.  

The 2019-20 Report

Reflecting on Community Engaged Learning

 by Melinda Wilson, Department of English 

One of the most beneficial features of reflective writing is its allowance for flexibility. Most semesters, my CEL students engage in four different reflective writing assignments that allow them to express concerns, anxieties, failures, triumphs, and lingering questions, all while practicing the writing skill sets covered in our First Year Composition course. These assignments are typically low stakes, meaning that, while they are graded, they are not weighted as heavily as formal writing assignments, which gives students the necessary freedom to explore their experiences in an honest and genuine fashion and without the constraints of more formal writing.

The first reflection is really a pre-reflection assignment, in which students are asked to explore their expectations for their work with our community partners before that work has actually begun. Often, students are nervous to begin their service learning, as they are unsure what to expect. This assignment provides them a much needed opportunity to alleviate some of those fears and anxieties prior to beginning their work with the community partner. 

The second reflection asks students to use the skills they learn regarding personal and narrative writing to tell the story of their first service learning experience of the semester. They incorporate narrative elements such as descriptive writing, sensory detail, plot structure, character and dialogue to engage their readers and reflect on their first service learning opportunity. 

The third reflection has students practice their researching skills, as they must locate an academic article from a peer-reviewed journal in the library’s databases that somehow connects to the issue on which their service learning is centered. This assignment is particularly important, as it allows students to enhance their research writing skill sets including responding to research articles, integrating and analyzing quoted material, as well as paraphrasing and citing sources. 

Finally, the last reflection provides a return to the purely reflective model in which students are able to reflect on the whole of their semester’s service learning work and the relationship they were able to develop with the partner community. Students revisit the concerns they had at the start of the semester and consider how they met these challenges. They also explore how their participation in the work of our community partner contributes to the overall richness of their college experience. 

Coupled with in-class discussion of their service learning experiences, these reflective writing assignments reinforce the writing lessons from the semester as well as afford the students plentiful low-stakes writing opportunities. 

Community Engagement -- it can help your career!

There are many reasons to get involved in community engagement at Manhattan College. You may feel morally and/or ethically called to contribute to society, or assist in addressing injustice and inequality. You will get the satisfaction of aiding some great organizations and our neighbors. You may learn skills, you may learn about other people and the world, and you will certainly learn more about yourself.

It may also be good for your career.

Annual career outcome surveys of Manhattan College graduating classes show that community service during college is related to positive career outcomes. Among alumni who graduated from Manhattan College in 2018, only 6% reported they were “still seeking”, as compared to 13% of those who had not been involved in community service.  

In addition, 35% of the alumni who did service reported that their participation had influenced their career paths.

The College has identified several types of experiences that appear to lead to better career outcomes: Paid and unpaid internships, research, volunteer or community service, and student teaching. Students who engage in one or more of these experiences are more likely to be employed, in graduate school or both nine months after graduation. Of those alumni who had none of these experiences during their undergraduate years, 19% were still seeking a position nine months after graduation.

So we encourage Manhattan College students to consider the many opportunities to engage with our local community during their college years. These include:

• Community Engaged Learning Classes
• LOCo (Lasallian Outreach Collaborative)
• Service on Saturdays
• Community Service Work Study
• Join a club that engages in service, or propose a service project in a club you belong to

      Come see Margaret Groarke or Kathleen von Euw if we can help you find the opportunity that is right for you. 

Register for a Community Engaged Learning Course for Spring 2020!

As Manhattan College students register for the Spring 2020 semester, we announce the Community Engaged Learning classes for next semester!

Next semester's CEL classes are listed on our website.

Check out the options, and find a class that combines classroom learning, community service, and real world experience!

NJ Record reports on Manhattan College community engagement efforts

The Record, a New Jersey newspaper, published a story September 20, 2019, about community engagement at Manhattan College and Ramapo College. In the story, Margaret Groarke, coordinator of community engaged learning, discussed student involvement in LOCO and classes in which professors and students engage in Community Engaged Learning.

Manhattan College team to present at Service Learning Conference

by Kerri Mulqueen. Assistant Professor of Education and Evelyn Scaramella, Associate Professor of Spanish

 A team of Manhattan College faculty and administrators will present at a roundtable at the 2019 International Association for Research on Service Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico from October 23-25. Titled, "The Global Bronx: Crossing Borders to Find a Better Way Forward," the roundtable will showcase the multiple ways that Manhattan College works across the institution to encourage literal and figurative border crossing through community engagement and service learning programming. Speakers include Kathleen Von Euw, Assistant Director of Community Engagement and Partnerships, Lois Harr, Director of Campus Ministry and Social Action, Evelyn Scaramella, Associate Professor of Spanish, and Kerri Mulqueen, Assistant Professor of Education, who will all highlight key initiatives at the College. The Manhattan College Strategic Plan calls for programming that will "enhance support for interdisciplinary teaching, scholarship, and service, especially, but not exclusively, aligned with the Lasallian and Catholic national and international networks, and integrated with academic, curricular and co-curricular programs" as well as "exemplify and enhance local and global civic engagement consistent with the social justice values of the College’s Lasallian Catholic identity, with particular attention to the alleviation of human suffering." Answers to this call for consciousness raising and advocacy training can be seen in myriad locations across the College.

 Ms. Von Euw will address the ways in which the Social Action office encourages the application of Community-Engaged Learning as a pedagogical approach through which faculty develop reciprocal community partnerships towards a goal of engaging students in relevant and meaningful service or research connected to course content and addressing real community needs as defined by the community. Ms. Harr will discuss Manhattan's position as a Catholic Relief Services Global Campus, promoting the virtue of solidarity described by Pope John Paul II. As a result, students and faculty at Manhattan strive to cross borders literally and metaphorically through approaches informed by service learning and community engagement principles and practices. Dr. Scaramella will explore the implementation of Spanish-English language exchange sessions, intercambios, between non-native college students and adult native Spanish-speakers, as they are employed within service trips in intermediate and advanced level Spanish language classes. Dr. Mulqueen will address the integral nature of campus to community partnership and reciprocity in teacher education using the lens of an ongoing partnership between her Adolescent Language and Literacy course and ELLIS Prep, a local secondary school where the student body is made up entirely of immigrants with less than one year in the United States at the time of enrollment.

 The roundtable will provide a varied perspective on the border crossing opportunities facilitated at our College vis a vis its fortunate geographical location in the diverse cultural landscape of the Bronx as well as via its positionality as an institution whose mission and affiliations are rooted in social justice. Through this conference, we will share best practices around how to specifically and more broadly infuse the student experience with meaning community engagement and service learning opportunities across offices and across disciplines.

Community-Engaged Learning: one of the best decisions that I’ve ever made

by Devaughn Harris

If I could give you one piece of advice when it comes to choosing whether you’d want to take a community-engaged learning course or not, I’d just say do it. It’s not that simple, of course, because you’d have questions that many professors who’ve taught said courses or administrators familiar with the program can answer; what happens when you have questions for students who have already been introduced to the community-engaged learning environment though? Yea, that’s where I come in. 

Around mid-January, in other words, the beginning of the spring semester at Manhattan College, I was a history major ready to learn everything there is to learn about history. Prior to this semester, during the registration period, I was told that all history majors are required to take an introductory course at some point throughout their time in the program labeled “History 100: (subtitle dependent on professor)”, and this course was meant to teach students in the program how to use history in the world around us, as opposed to just memorizing information from a book. I found out that the History 100 course planned for the 2019 spring semester was a “community-engaged learning” course. What the hell is that? I thought as I sat in my advisor’s office. After a thorough explanation, I realized that a community-engaged learning course was not your typical college, lecture-style class, and my shock immediately turned into excitement. 

After listening to my advisor’s explanation of the course that I would be taking, my mind immediately conjured a scenario in which I was sitting in a room with my classmates, our brains dreading the amount of stress we were about to put them through. Then, our professor walks in, and it’s Robin Williams. He starts telling us that textbook learning is nonsense, we are all free thinkers, and at a point we even start standing on desks shouting, “O, Captain, my Captain!” Yes, if you haven’t figured it out by now, I love Dead Poets Society. So, to say the least, I was excited to do some unconventional, out-of-classroom learning, and I thought this class was going to be my chance to experience that. That would’ve been dope, but reality wasn’t exactly compliant with my expectations. 

Our class was called “Slavery in the Bronx,” and our goal as a class was to put together a presentation showing people historical evidence that slavery existed, and was pretty prominent, in the northern region of America. Specifically, we were focused on creating a presentation that we planned to present to the community of Hunts Point in the Bronx at the end of the semester, and a key part of accomplishing that goal was using the surrounding Bronx community as our classroom just as much, if not more, as our classroom on campus. 

Skipping towards the middle of the semester where we passed the contextual phase; we established our goal and now we had to map out the logistics of working towards that goal. Our professor did most of the logistical work, which included setting up meetings with professionals in the field we were studying, planning field trips, and even choosing the venue for our final presentation. We were split up into various groups and given different responsibilities. There were four groups in total; Genealogy, Parks/Communications, Community Outreach/PR, and Maps. I was part of the map group along with two other students. In every group, there was a recurring theme: collaboration. Not only did I have to work together with the individuals in my group, but I also had to work with other groups sometimes because one group may have information that helped my group complete whatever task we were working on at the time. No matter how much of a solo worker you think you are, in community engagement courses you will have to work with others for the sake of completing a task and reaching your class’ end goal in a timely manner.

If you’re a freshman at Manhattan College and you’re not that good at socializing (like me), community-engagement classes are the perfect way to make friends, or at least socialize under the guise of ‘getting work done.’ The key in my class was collaboration. If we didn’t work together as a class, there was absolutely no way our presentation could’ve come out the way it did. The people that I met in History 100 have inspired me in many ways to become more socially aware, more empathetic towards others and more passionate about whatever I study. My professor was a part of that inspiration too. He wasn’t exactly Robin Williams, but from the beginning, he kept it real with us. He told us that either our final presentation would be a success or a failure. Plain and simple. He told us that sometimes life just happens, you make plans and they don’t come to fruition the way you thought they would, but that doesn’t take away from the experience. What do they say? It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey? Whatever it is, it’s true. Regardless of whether our project was successful or not, I still finished the semester with more friendships than I did at the beginning, more knowledge than I did at the beginning, and a better view of unorthodox learning. 

The actual engagement with the surrounding community of the Bronx was a vital component as well! From meeting with professors from other universities, to visiting St. Ignatius Loyola and speaking with, arguably, the most socially aware middle schoolers I’ll probably ever meet, I was able to take a piece from every encounter we made during the semester and form one mosaic of everything that made my experience with community-engaged learning one that I’ll never forget.

My advice to you, reader, is that you understand that the words community engagement means much more than you might think. When you take a community-engaged learning course, you’re focused on being more in tune with the community, yes, but you’re also forming a community yourself, whether you realize it or not. There are people you will meet throughout the semester that will teach you things that you simply can’t learn by sitting in a classroom taking notes, and you’ll create friendships that’ll hopefully last for a lifetime. So, if you’re on the fence like I was, or nervous about taking a community-engaged learning course at Manhattan, just do it. It’s the best way to merge community and learning, and it's a great way to take a break from the routine of the traditional classroom setting. 

P.S. - If you were wondering how our presentation turned out and would like to watch it, you can see it on Manhattan College’s Facebook page.

Devaughn Harris is a sophomore majoring in philosophy and minoring in history. He's also a creative: a writer, a thinker, a doer.

If High School Students can do it . . .

By Margaret Groarke

Last semester, I read the two stories linked below, about a New Jersey high school teacher and his AP government and politics students. Frustrated by the difficulties they faced researching cold murder cases from the Civil Rights era, they drafted a bill to make it easier to access this information, and successfully pushed to have it passed by Congress.

As you can see in the Columbia Journalism Review article, the AP class research project grew out of teacher Stuart Wexler's own research project. Over several years, successive AP classes contributed to the project, and upon their graduation, passed it on to the next class.

Many times we think of community engaged learning as a kind of periodic service activity, but the research and advocacy these students did is an excellent example of community engaged learning -- the students contributed to the scholars, family members and communities who longed to resolve these long-ago murders, and they learned a great deal about how government bureaucracy and the legislative process work.

Tom Jackman, "From Students in high school all the way to the president's desk" Washington Post, February 23, 2018.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/02/23/students-high-school-all-way-presidents-desk-how-government-class-fought-release-unsolved-fbi-civil-rights-case-files/?utm_term=.65fdd27ad546

Alexandra Neason, "Bill by New Jersey Students aims to open Civil Rights cold cases," Columbia Journalism Review, April 24, 2018.
https://www.cjr.org/analysis/bill-by-new-jersey-students-aims-to-open-civil-rights-cold-cases.php

Doing Math in the Real World

by Ira Gerhardt, PhD
Department of Mathematics

We first offered MATH 492 (Topics in Mathematics: Mathematical Modeling) in the Spring 2015 term; its purpose was to provide interested students (typically mathematics majors, but we have also had a handful of engineers and finance majors over the years) with the opportunity to use their mathematics to help clients solve real-world problems and answer real-world questions.  Our first client was Dr. David Mahan, Director of the Office of Institutional Effectiveness here at Manhattan.  Eight students divided into three group projects, using data analytics to answer questions for David about student retention, engagement, and satisfaction.  These student groups presented their findings to an audience of about 50 to 60 members of the College community including Dr. Mahan, Dean Theodosiou of the School of Science, and Provost Clyde.

Over the next two years we work with a pair of non-profit organizations--the Animal Care Center (ACC) of NYC and the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference (NYNJTC)--and new groups of students again analyzed data and made presentations.  However, in this third year (with NYNJTC) we only had six students (after growing to 13 students the year of ACC), and we decided to take a year off with a plan to offer MATH 492 once again in Spring 2019.  I began searching for a client in Summer 2018, at which point my colleague Dr. Helene Tyler put me in contact with Joshua Stevenson in the office of NYC Councilman Andrew Cohen (representing District 11 in the Bronx).  Josh then connected me with Marissa Yanni, the director of the Participatory Budgeting (PB) team in NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson's office.  PB is a process in which regular citizens propose projects for their areas and vote to get them funded through their Councilperson.  Working with PB was the perfect client opportunity; the program was still in its early days (having been around for only seven years at this point) and no data analytics had yet to be performed, so everything that our students did was value-added.  At the same time the students got great exposure to the PB process and a deeper understanding of the workings of the NYC Council.  Marissa (our client) was incredibly supportive and the kids were very enthusiastic; the final presentations were a big hit, and the results presented there--included analysis of what demographic populations PB is successfully reaching and failing to reach, what project type proposal are the most likely to succeed and in which boroughs, etc.--should help PB in the years to come.  

MATH 492 has been a win-win for everyone involved.  Whether the client was the College, a non-profit, or the City Council itself, the work done by our students has always been of a quality that we can talk about with pride.  The students get exposure to real-world data, and in the end can put their work for this course on their resume' as consulting experience.  Several students from the first three years of 492 made a point of telling me that their work in 492 was something they were asked about in their first-round interviews; those individuals are now analysts and projects managers at real estate firms and hedge funds as well as household names like Avon and UPS.

Jaspers Study History of Slavery in the Bronx

How do we find the history that has been forgotten? 

In the Spring 2019 semester, Dr. Adam Arenson offered a new community engaged learning course, History 100, Slavery in the Bronx. As Arenson told his students in the syllabus at the beginning of the semester, "We will work with a community partner—the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground project—to explore how the history of slavery continues to reverberate in the Bronx, and to understand what it means for the local community in Hunts Point, especially its elementary-school students. In consultation with the HPSBG group, we will extend their research and discuss possible ways to memorialize the enslaved people buried at the site, all of which we will present in a public setting at the end of the semester."

Dr. Adam Arenson shows the students the headstones of the Hunt family. 

In 2013, Philip Panaritis, a retired official with the Department of Education, and Justin Czarka, a teacher at P.S. 48, began exploring the history of the unmarked burial ground. Their website chronicles their efforts, along with their students and other community partners to find out exactly where people are buried, who is buried there, and to advocate for the effective commemoration of the people buried there. Through their research, they were able to get the area recognized as the burial place for enslaved people, and got the Parks descriptive sign in the park revised to include mention of it. 

Philip Panaritis talks to the Manhattan College students.

Arenson and his class partnered with them to contribute to their efforts.  Over the course of the semester, they visited Hunts Point five times -- the final time to present the results of their research at a public forum in the Hunts Point branch of the New York Public Library. 

They also visited the Van Cortlandt House Museum, and the Slave Burial Ground there, and partnered with the Kingsbridge Historical Society. They learned about and employed the techniques historians use to discover and uncover historical information, and discussed ways to make this information accessible to the community -- both traditional methods, like oral presentations and signs, and digital methods, like mapping software. 

In May, the HIST 100 students made a public presentation about what they learned. In closing, one student referenced the respect shown the Hunt family, whose burial ground is gated off, and the burial ground of the enslaved persons, which, because it is unmarked, people walk on without being aware of the people buried below.    

To learn more about the course -- and the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground -- see the coverage on ABC7 and Manhattan College's own website. 

Professor Arenson will be continuing this project in the Fall 2019, as he teaches an Arches class which will also partner with these groups to forward the work of learning about and educating the public about the enslaved persons who lived in these communities. 

Introducing our new blog for Community Engaged Learning at Manhattan College!

I'm launching this blog, as a way to share ideas and information about opportunities to do community engaged learning (CEL) at Manhattan College, and more broadly to publicize interesting events, organizations and projects going on in the Bronx. 

Manhattan College faculty offer, on average, fifteen community engaged learning courses a semester, in every school of the college. As the coordinator of Community Engaged Learning at Manhattan College, I hope to inspire and assist more faculty in developing community engaged learning courses.  Kathleen Von Euw, Assistant Director of Community Engagement and Partnerships, and I can help interested faculty in various ways: 

• Every spring, we lead a faculty development seminar for faculty wishing to develop a CEL course
• We assist faculty in identifying potential community partners and developing a working relationship
• We host a networking reception each fall to connect faculty and community partners, and to celebrate our work together
• We tag and publicize CEL courses to encourage students to take advantage of this special learning opportunity

We'll post at least four kinds of things to this blog, using these labels to allow you to search for the things that interest you: 

• Faculty Development: conferences, faculty development and ideas for faculty doing Community Engaged Learning
• Events: local events that sound fun and/or informative; opportunities to explore the Bronx and other nearby communities. Maybe one of these events would make a good class trip.
• Resources: local organizations doing interesting work that you might consider partnering with; local resources that you may find useful to connect students with. 
• News: News stories and firsthard reports from faculty about CEL projects, at Manhattan College or elsewhere, to inspire us to try new things.