Service Learning Partnership Between University And School Students: Experiential Learning Inspired Through Community Research

This article describes a service learning project implemented jointly by undergraduate and high school students during summer. The service learning project was designed through a Summer Research Institute hosted at a Midwestern University; the institute encouraged faculty to recruit undergraduate students who would partner with area high school students to conduct a community-based research project in their field of interest. The article describes the partnership between students, as well as the experiential learning that occurred during: research topic identification, literature analysis, planning and implementing a mixed-methodology community-based research project, and during the qualitative and quantitative data analysis, by students. Using a mosaic theory, the students inferred relationships between three apparently unrelated spheres of their research: challenges faced by youth in the community, financial health of social services for youth, and corporate philanthropy for youth services. Recommendations for designing creative academic, experiential and service learning projects are offered for all educators.