scholarly journals Villanova Engineering Service Learning

Author(s):  
Jordan Ermilio ◽  
Garrett Clayton ◽  
Mahmoud Kabalan

The College of Engineering at Villanova University has a long history of providing technical services to support humanitarian initiatives. For over twenty years, engineering faculty and students have been participating in engineering outreach activities, which are commonly referred to as Engineering Service Learning. In 1991, a small group of engineering students and faculty traveled to work with the Cheypo-Bayano Mission in Panama. Students who graduate were excited to return to Panama to see their projects through to completion, which included a large water supply distribution system and a bridge for a small remote community in the region. At that time, the concept of service-learning did not exist, but due to the Augustinian Heritage at Villanova University, these types of activities have been strongly encouraged. In fact, the idea of ministry has been a strategic part of the university’ mission since 1979, and at the present time, there are an estimated 800 students and advisors who travel annually to over 40 locations globally (including the US) to volunteer on service projects. These projects include engineering and non-engineering activities, but the success of the engineering service learning program has been significantly influenced by the culture of service that exists at Villanova University and the Augustinian values which are routed in service to society.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-184
Author(s):  
Nora Pillard Reynolds

This article was part of a larger study that explored community participants’ perspectives in [Municipality, Country] about the long-term global service learning (GSL) partnership with [Name of university] University’s College of Engineering (Author, year). This article explores the question: From the community participants’ perspectives, what are their educational goals for the university engineering students in this partnership? While I intentionally centered this article on the community participants’ perspectives, I also explored areas of alignment and areas of difference between the different stakeholder groups’ perspectives about learning and knowledge. Although global citizenship surfaced in interviews with both community and university participants, the community participant perspectives push farther than the university administrators/ faculty and call for critical global citizenship education (Andreotti, 2006).


2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-505
Author(s):  
David S. Busch

In the early 1960s, Peace Corps staff turned to American colleges and universities to prepare young Americans for volunteer service abroad. In doing so, the agency applied the university's modernist conceptions of citizenship education to volunteer training. The training staff and volunteers quickly discovered, however, that prevailing methods of education in the university were ineffective for community-development work abroad. As a result, the agency evolved its own pedagogical practices and helped shape early ideas of service learning in American higher education. The Peace Corps staff and supporters nonetheless maintained the assumptions of development and modernist citizenship, setting limits on the broader visions of education emerging out of international volunteerism in the 1960s. The history of the Peace Corps training in the 1960s and the agency's efforts to rethink training approaches offer a window onto the underlying tensions of citizenship education in the modern university.


2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clarissa Lopez ◽  
Kuan Chen Tsai

The purpose of this study was to determine if student’s perceptions of service learning projects lead to an understanding the mission of the University of the Incarnate Word. It is through the service learning opportunity that a window opens to determine if students gain a prospective of service learning and the meaning of the mission of the institution. The research findings revealed moderate positive relationships among students’ perceptions of learning service projects and the students’ understanding of the mission of the institution. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed.


Author(s):  
Janet Dong ◽  
Janak Dave

Experiential Learning (EL) is a philosophy in which educators purposefully engage learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to maximize learning, increase knowledge, and develop skills. Based on the learning cycle proposed by Lewin and the philosophy of Dewey, in that each experience builds upon previous experiences and influences the way future experiences will affect the learner, Kolb[1] developed the experiential learning model to describe the learning process. The four stages of the model are: Concrete Experience, Reflective Observation, Abstract Conceptualization and Active Experimentation. This model shows how theory, concrete experience, reflection and active experimentation can be brought together to produce richer learning than any of these elements can on its own. The College of Engineering and Applied Science did not implement the Kolb model fully due to insufficient resources. Therefore, only the first two of the four stages were used. Many avenues of concrete experiential learning exist for the students in the engineering technology programs at the University of Cincinnati, such as co-op, service learning, global study programs, field projects, academic research, etc. This paper gives a description of the experiential learning of students at the University of Cincinnati in the areas of global study, honors program and undergraduate research. Two faculty members in Mechanical Engineering Technology from the College of Engineering and Applied Science were involved in these experiences. Their experiences, along with student reflections, are discussed in the paper.


Author(s):  
Heather N. Bischel ◽  
Eric R. Sundstrom

Student-initiated projects in engineering service learning represent an opportunity to educate engineering students on topics of sustainability, motivate new engineers to work on humanitarian focused projects, and provide impact on projects for underserved populations in partnership with community organizations. Based on iterations of an engineering design course operated by student participants of Engineers for a Sustainable World at Stanford University, we provide an analysis and discussion of the structural and operational components of a student-initiated engineering design course created to support international service projects. Course ratings demonstrate overall improvement through time in student satisfaction, indicating continued improvement of the course structure and execution despite yearly turnover in personnel. The current two-part course model consists of a one-unit lecture series followed by a three-unit design course, with classroom components complemented by opportunities for international service including project and community assessments and a summer internship program. Overall, course evaluation results were comparable to or better than faculty-led engineering design courses in mechanical, civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. While concerns over consistency persist, overall performance demonstrates successful integration of student-initiated design into the engineering curriculum.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Kuley ◽  
Sean Maw ◽  
Terry Fonstad

This paper focuses on feedback received from a set of qualitative questions that were administered to undergraduate students in the College of Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan, as part of a larger mixed methods study. The larger study aims to identify what characteristics, if any, can predict or are related to student success; The “start-stop-continue” method was utilized to assess student perceptions about  their success in the college as a whole. The students were asked: Are there any specific things that you can think of that act/acted as barriers to your success in engineering (stop)? What could the college do/change to make first year more successful for engineering students (start)? Is there anything in your engineering degree so far that you feel is done well and helps students succeed (continue)? Students identified the quality of instruction early in their program as well as adjustment to college workloads and self-directed learning as the most significant barriers tostudent success.


Author(s):  
Omid Mirzaei ◽  
Paul Neufeld ◽  
Jade Knoblauch ◽  
Jessica Gerbrandt ◽  
Mark Runco ◽  
...  

.Abstract – In the latter half of 2015, a survey looking at attitudes and beliefs about creativity was distributed on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan. Over 2000 responses were gathered, including more than 200 in the College of Engineering. Initial quantitative results from this study were reported in 2016 in Neufeld et al [2].  In terms of the methods used in the study, as discussed in Neufeld et al [2], an online pilot survey was distributed to students and faculty from a variety of the Colleges at the University. Survey questions probed respondents’ affinity for creativity, their personality characteristics, their opinions on state, trait and skill-based viewpoints on creativity, and demographic details.  The first part of the survey was a validated Creative Attitudes and Values measurement tool (part of the Runco Creativity Assessment Battery (rCAB)© 2012), as discussed in Acar and Runco [1]. This tool consists of 25, 5-point Likert scale items. Of these 25 items, 15 and 10 were indicative and contraindicative items, respectively. Contraindicative items were reverse coded so that they could be used along with the indicative ones. Both past research and our results showed good inter-item reliability scores for this measurement tool.  In Neufeld et al [2] we presented results covering all of the closed-form, quantitative questions along with some correlational calculations with the rCAB scores. The focus of the current paper is on the qualitative results, as well as on a factor analysis of the rCAB questions.  The factor analysis was quite successful. We used SPSS and forced a correlation of items, reducing to three factors. We have just over 29% of variance accounted for, with 10% non-redundant residuals. We have strong anti-correlation between one factor and the other two, and no correlation between the other two. These results will be compared to those of the rCAB authors [3].  As for the qualitative data, we asked several open-ended questions to probe how respondents defined creativity, whether they regarded it as a positive behavior, as well as how they felt about creativity in terms of it being a skill, trait and/or state. For example, pairs of questions asked when creativity is difficult and easy, when it should and should not be used, and when it grows and diminishes. For each of the 9 questions that had open-ended answers, concepts were extracted from individual responses. Concepts were then grouped into themes. Themes and concepts were compared across questions and were aligned. Responses were then coded for concepts and themes. At this point, the text data could be quantitatively examined. This paper presents those results, and discusses the implications of the concepts, themes, and their statistics for how we talk about creativity, and how we can teach it. Comparisons will be made between the results from engineering students and staff versus non-engineers.  This paper completes the first level of evaluation of the results of this initial survey focused on attitudes and beliefs about creativity. Future work will focus on examining correlations between the results of different questions, including the rCAB scores.  


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Belkora ◽  
Tia Weinberg ◽  
Jasper Murphy ◽  
Sneha Karthikeyan ◽  
Henrietta Tran ◽  
...  

This report arises from the intersection of service learning and population health at an academic medical center. At the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the Office of Population Health and Accountable Care (OPHAC) employs health care navigators to help patients access and benefit from high-value care. In early 2020, facing COVID-19, UCSF leaders asked OPHAC to help patients and employees navigate testing, treatment, tracing, and returning to work protocols. OPHAC established a COVID hotline to route callers to the appropriate resources, but needed to increase the capacity of the navigator workforce. To address this need, OPHAC turned to UCSF's service learning program for undergraduates, the Patient Support Corps (PSC). In this program, UC Berkeley undergraduates earn academic credit in exchange for serving as unpaid patient navigators. In July 2020, OPHAC provided administrative funding for the PSC to recruit and deploy students as COVID hotline navigators. In September 2020, the PSC deployed 20 students collectively representing 2.0 full-time equivalent navigators. After training and observation, and with supervision and escalation pathways, students were able to fill half-day shifts and perform near the level of staff navigators. Key facilitators relevant to success reflected both PSC and OPHAC strengths. The PSC onboards student interns as institutional affiliates, giving them access to key information technology systems, and trains them in privacy and other regulatory requirements so they can work directly with patients. OPHAC strengths included a learning health systems culture that fosters peer mentoring and collaboration. A key challenge was that, even after training, students required around 10 h of supervised practice before being able to take calls independently. As a result, students rolled on to the hotline in waves rather than all at once. Post-COVID, OPHAC is planning to use student navigators for outreach. Meanwhile, the PSC is collaborating with pipeline programs in hopes of offering this internship experience to more students from backgrounds that are under-represented in healthcare. Other campuses in the University of California system are interested in replicating this program. Adopters see the opportunity to increase capacity and diversity while developing the next generation of health and allied health professionals.


Author(s):  
Heiden C Anorico

Service-learning in the educational sector has shown increased impact on student lifelong learning and institutional commitment to the community over the past decade. Universities in the Philippines provide various service-learning programs for their partner communities, to address students’ understanding of real-life community needs. However, there has been little study on students’ service-learning in geriatric institutions. This article first discusses higher education in the Philippines, noting the impact of the National Service Training Program on institutions’ programs. It then describes how one university, the University of Santo Tomas, has responded to this policy framework with the development of community programs that also meet its goals for social transformation. One particular program is examined – a service-learning program involving college students and a geriatric institution in Manila. Early qualitative feedback provides an understanding of college students’ perceptions of the elderly and the service-learning implemented by the university. It also offers a strong foundation for continuing to improve the current service-learning program. From this study an 8-loop model has been developed for future evaluations of the service-learning program in this geriatric institution. Keywordsservice-learning, elderly, geriatric institution, Philippines higher education


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