An Overview

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In order to 1) study service-learning and local student outreach activities and efforts on the Cal Poly Pomona campus, and 2) analyze new initiatives and programs that incorporate service-learning, the Steering Committee engaged in several wide-ranging efforts to collect data, faculty/staff input or interpretation, and faculty/staff recommendations. A description of the process is found in Annex E6.

The Committee found that Cal Poly Pomona has had exchange programs and service-learning activities in its past, but in recent years there has been a call for more community partnerships focusing on student learning and service-learning exchanges as well as a move away from a provincial identity to a greater cosmopolitan identity. These calls have come in many forms such as:

• Governor Gray Davis’s call for service-learning to be performed by university students as an essential part of their growth and education,
• discussions and public announcements concerning the California State University system’s possible requirement of service-learning as part of an undergraduate education, and
• internal discussions held during the strategic planning process.

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In response to calls to develop service-learning as part of a degree-granting program, the Teacher Education department has developed a way of offering its students this credit-bearing experience through its newly-formed Center for Leadership and Service-Learning (Appendix E2). During Fall Conference 1999, Dr. Aubrey Fine presented information and overviews to the WASC committee and other members of the campus community who attended. He critiqued what he sees as misrepresentations of service-learning, which he views as connected to the "learning by doing" model of Cal Poly Pomona, and he mentioned a need for institutional support and sanction.

The Committee learned that this service-learning program draws upon an appeal to volunteerism and high ideals of assisting others and making the world a better place, while developing experience in one’s profession. The planned experiences, thus far, match Cal Poly Pomona students to classrooms in local public schools in the Pomona Unified School District as tutors for the children’s reading programs. Additionally, the Center for Leadership and Service Learning seeks to operate institutionally as a clearinghouse for service-learning in that faculty members can agree to assign their entire class, for example, to participate in service-learning through this Center as a requirement of their classes. Because the program is so new, long-term effectiveness studies can be conducted but cannot be expected to yield results yet.

The Center for Leadership and Service Learning has arranged for a new "Bridges" program that not only matches students to tutoring assignments in a local public school but also offers an above-minimum wage to participants. A wage for service is appropriate for the Cal Poly Pomona student body, most of whom work and do not come from families of economic privilege.

In sum, Cal Poly Pomona has made great strides in the area of service-learning, and it would benefit the university and the state for us to further clarify and strengthen Cal Poly Pomona’s mandate to pursue this socially-beneficent and pedagogically-sound New Direction. As a polytechnic, with our hands-on pedagogical tradition, we have a special calling to this kind of action learning.

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1. Provide adequate services and staffing to the National Student Exchange Program. The WASC committee recommends that adequate institutional support, information dissemination, and profile be provided this successful program. The passionate commitment and talent of the individuals who create and maintain this program should be recognized and respected, not be made subject to shifting and disruptive organizational re-structuring nor to shifting budget plans.

2. The WASC committee recommends that NSEP stay in its current institutional location. The WASC committee recommends that adequate resources be allocated to support existing recruitment efforts and to develop new and expanded recruitment efforts. Cal Poly Pomona may consider expanding its use of devices such as student orientation and electronic interactions conducted by students to further student awareness of this program; additionally, NSEP recruitment can be institutionally linked with outreach efforts in local high schools and in nontraditional-student support services (such as the Equal Opportunity Office or Maximizing Engineering Potential).

3. The WASC committee recommends that the deans’ offices help foster awareness of this program through reasonable and educational means such as:

• engaging faculty speakers from other campuses that participate in exchange agreements to discuss the particulars of their home campus programs and means by which engineering students or humanities majors, for example can study out of state,

Ö hosting receptions for students who are visiting here and for those Cal Poly Pomona students who have returned from an exchange so that nonparticipating students can meet participants, and

Ö providing adequate information to their school’s or college’s advisors for dissemination to their student advisees. Additionally, the Cal Poly Pomona campus can review and plan for ways it can both send and receive nontraditional students such as single parents in terms of arranging adequate housing and financial or pre-arranged student employment opportunities

4. Coordinate programs across campus, plan organizational decisions in ways that are respectful of faculty/staff dedication, and link activities to curriculum and to other diversity efforts on campus. The WASC committee found that activities on the Cal Poly Pomona campus can be more clearly linked and organized. These improved links should help promote the realization of some the aims in Recommendation #1 in terms of greater recruitment of nontraditional students as well as continued involvement and support for this successful program. The WASC committee suggests that organizations for support of nontraditional students such as the Cesar E. Chavez Center for Higher Education, for example, think of ways of using this program as they support and prepare students for graduate school, that the dimension of having students experience other campuses in a sheltered, supportive way can be a way of planning for and acculturating to graduate school and can be an on-the-ground way for student, self-directed research into graduate school funding and scholarship opportunities while completing undergraduate coursework in the exchange program. The WASC committee also suggests that Cal Poly Pomona programs with a residential component, such as the Center for Regenerative Studies, and other majors with high residence hall occupation think of ways of using this program so their students may experience other campuses’ academic programs.

The WASC committee suggests that discussions and study of a domestic, faculty exchange program linked to the aims of the NSEP program be held by Cal Poly Pomona with wide participation from the campus community, and that these discussions be assessed for interest, intellectual worth, feasibility, and as means for furthering the goal stated in the Strategic Plan for furthering community involvement and expanding our references beyond the horizon of Cal Poly Pomona with a return, feedback device that will help exchanges enhance the home campus.

5. The WASC Committee recommends the continuation of assessment efforts. The WASC committee commends the NSEP for its careful record-keeping, and, more importantly, its use of qualitative instruments such as the students pre- and post- reflective essays wherein they can measure and assess their growth and discovery. In a sometimes overly numbers-driven atmosphere of assessment, these efforts are especially apt for their human-centered concerns which reflect the intellectual and experiential ("learn by doing") aims of the university. The WASC committee recommends that the NSEP continue to be linked to national assessment reports and to continue to be open to the development of new tools that measure and reflect new efforts in the program, such as a renewed emphasis on nontraditional students or expansion to include single parents. It also would be positive to hold cross-campus service learning policy discussions and evaluate the curriculum so its design strengthens the theoretical and intellectual underpinnings of teacher education and other programs involved in service learning.

6. The WASC committee recommends that care be taken in the design and application of service learning so that students have access to the theoretical and intellectual underpinnings of their majors. For example, the Cal Poly Pomona campus can hold discussions on issues such as: what are the politics of volunteerism, how has gender traditionally played a role in unpaid work, how might acts of intervention into neighboring communities have social and political consequences that can be negotiated to avoid simplistic acts of charity, how are commitments to help others advanced or not by the precepts of one’s field of study. Further, the WASC committee recommends that while much of the Center for Leadership and Service Learning seems commendable and there seem to be meaningful efforts to match community activities with in-class discussion, programs such as Teacher Education which already contain a sizable "student teaching" component could consider the consequences of offering even less in-class, theoretical and intellectual work.

7. The WASC committee recommends that assessment tools continue to be used and developed and that our campus assessment efforts be linked to state and national self-study efforts.

8. The WASC committee recommends that the Cal Poly Pomona campus draft policy after serious consideration of what the answer to the call of volunteerism means in higher education. These serious considerations can include an examination of whether a major traditionally held by women is asked to carry more of the burden of volunteerism than those majors traditionally held by men, whether volunteerism can be adapted in a meaningful way to the profile of our student body, the majority of whom work, many of whom are conducting the unpaid work of being parents, and the overwhelming majority of whom do not come from families of economic privilege. Because these efforts are so highly commendable, the WASC committee sees the need for clear articulations of how and why the campus plans its involvement in these efforts. Further, an examination of how these programs link to already existing practices of internships, residencies, student-teaching, and practica can be articulated especially to address the call for cross-campus coordination of efforts and resources.

9. The WASC committee recommends that the means of communication with the Chancellor’s Office be regularized and that our priority be a full discussion of the definition of service-learning for the following reasons: as presently constituted, the WASC committee finds the definition too narrow, in that it excludes valuable field experiences, internships, and student teaching that accomplish many of the educational aims of service learning. The WASC committee sees that valuable educational modes and commitments are marginalized by the narrowness of the definition, and even worse, can cause students to duplicate educational experiences because usual forms of field experiences, internships, or student teaching fall short of the service-learning definition. We think it is a giant move forward that the Chancellor’s Office has established a central coordinating office for service-learning at the CSU, and that its director has been aggressive in reaching out to the campuses. We look to her for more support of our efforts.

The WASC committee sees that a narrow application of service-learning may disallow students from engaging their intellectual and civic understandings and critical judgements by assuming that the aims and goals of agencies be internalized and furthered by contributions of student-hours of investment. Indeed, the historic and current markers of students, such as ethnicity, gender, and class may rightfully cause students and faculty to desire not the furtherance of the aims and goals of some agencies; and that given the legacy of social inequality, students may have an agency assignment in contradiction with their own aims of community uplift; and given the situation that most agencies represent the aims and goals of groups that traditionally hold sway and hold material resources to express their needs through institutions and agencies, some acknowledgement and accommodation of the dearth of supporting agencies that represent our students must be made. Further, the ideal universities offer, when they work well, is a means to critique institutions, engage in change, and promote contending differences of view. The WASC committee sees that although the Chancellor’s Office definition may seek a retreat from the politics of volunteerism with the problems associated with those sorts of efforts, the Chancellor’s office documents include citations from labor laws indicating that these programs should be volunteerism. The following excerpt suggests that:

• "Service-learning may prove the equivalent of paid labor for the application of some federal employment laws. The more service is like work and the less like education, the more likely it is subject to work-related rules, e.g., minimum wage laws....You can best protect your program by designing service assignments to bear little resemblance to an employment relationship... Students who provide volunteer services of a charitable nature are not covered by employment laws... True student "volunteers" are exempt from federal, wage, hour, and child labor laws. Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Labor has not issued any formal guidelines to assist its field personnel in determining how to spot a true "volunteer." Consequently, field investigators inconsistently apply the law and have objected to service-learning programs whose service opportunities too closely resemble an employer/employee relationship.

Ö "Labor officials are suspicious of any mandatory service requirement, since the mandatory nature of the service contradicts the voluntary classification. Labor officials are also inclined to doubt the volunteer status of students placed in private-for-profit businesses over which the Department of Labor has jurisdiction. Students placed in non-profit or charitable institutions are most likely to be exempt from labor standards, but may lose this status if they are performing service normally rendered by a paid employee, or if their service involves interstate commerce...."

10. The WASC committee recommends that our campus be given a clear statement on the retreat from service-learning requirement as first announced by Governor Davis because many on our campus still seem to think that service-learning may be mandatory. From the presentation by the representative from the Chancellor’s office, the WASC committee learned that "he has backed away" from service-learning as a requirement and wants "opportunities for service learning" to be made available to all students. Further, the documents provided by the Chancellor’s office include unanswered constitutional questions as this excerpt from their documents indicates:

Mandating service as a requirement for graduation raises possible constitutional objections. In the only reported case on the subject, however, courts upheld the service requirement.

The Bethlehem Area School District in Pennsylvania instituted a program requiring all public high school students to perform 60 hours of unpaid community service for graduation. Two students alleged that the requirement violated the Thirteenth Amendment prohibition of involuntary servitude, and First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. Both the Federal District Court and the Federal Court of Appeals upheld the legality of the mandatory service requirement. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, which makes the Court of Appeals decision final.

Schools and programs that wish to institute mandatory service requirements but are fearful of challenges under a state constitution or a contrary interpretation from the one rendered in Bethlehem could institute a plan by which students who choose not to serve could perform additional academic tasks to fulfill their credit requirements.