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. 

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.

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.