Community-Based Learning Offers Students Real World Experience in Addition to Their Studies

Since its inception in September 2001, the Donelan Office of Community-Based Learning at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., has offered more than 2,500 students the opportunity to integrate classroom study with immersion in the real world. Rooted in the College’s Jesuit mission, the program has brought students face-to-face with some of the most pressing challenges and needs in this urban community in central New England.

Faculty at the exclusively undergraduate College has embraced the program. After starting off with just four courses, today, 80 wide-ranging courses have been developed across the curriculum. An environmental mathematics course collected data on visitors to a science museum to help analyze optimal use of space. An urban studies class conducted surveys utilized by the City’s Planning Department. Other courses have been offered by biology, visual arts, religious studies, philosophy and education.

Students enrolled in a Community-Based Learning course with an experiential learning component are placed in a church, community or public service organization, or an education or health institution. Their placements usually consist of a weekly 2-to-2-1/2 hour session at a community site over the course of eight weeks, for a total of 15-20 hours per semester.

Approximately 60 faculty members have taught Community-Based Learning courses. What’s more impressive is that last year more than 800 students at Holy Cross participated in the program - enriching their academic experience and making them active participants in the local community

Among the Sociology Department courses offering a Community-Based Learning component is Faith, Churches & Social Change. Students examine the personal and organizational challenges that many urban parishes and congregations face, such as struggling to maintain a presence and a ministry in the 21st Century due to demographic shifts, deteriorating buildings, fewer resources and struggling local economies.

Students in the Spring 2004 class worked in four churches in the Worcester area. By the end of the semester, the majority of students said the class deepened their commitments to their faith and sparked a desire to do more service in an effort to strengthen the ties of the community to churches.

Theresa Neumann ’06, a philosophy major, says the class was so powerful (the walks in a poverty-stricken neighborhood impacted her most), it led her to do an internship with Worcester Interfaith, a group of religious congregations that do citywide strategic planning to empower the underprivileged through action. There, she is learning about community organizing to prevent the city from cutting funding to youth programs in the city.

I think the most important thing we got after taking this class is that we’re not only reading the books but we’re getting our hands dirty with this stuff," she says. "I think it makes the education experience that much more real and palpable. It gets us out of the bubble that we live in, that we can’t ignore the many problems in the world. You can read all the books you want, but sometimes you have to see it to believe it."

Neumann says the class has strengthened her commitment to helping others and hopes to join the Jesuit Volunteer Corps after graduation and pursue a career in social justice.

The program, made possible by a $1.2 million gift from alumnus Joseph P. Donelan II ’72 and his family, offers a win-win situation for both the College and the community. More than 60 community organizations - and counting - have participated in the program.

William C. Meinhofer, Ph.D., director of the office since its origin, says "one thing that is obvious after nearly four years is that the community has increased interaction with faculty and students and vice-versa. There are certain types of skills that faculty and students can apply to organizations that are looking for them. We have become a better neighbor and have bettered our position in the social fabric of the city, all while enhancing our curricular offerings."

Meinhofer says the program is a practical tool for faculty to use as a complement to their work in the classroom. In line with the College’s mission statement, it challenges students to look deeply at real world problems and encourages them to ask tough questions such as: "What are our obligations to one another? What is our special responsibility to the world’s poor and powerless?"

"A select, private college like Holy Cross puts students in a privileged environment and Community-Based Learning allows us to teach students that they have responsibilities to other human beings," says Meinhofer. "So when our students graduate, we can get them to live their lives in socially responsible ways."

# Related information: Students and Neighbors Create Community Mosaic # Donelan Office of Community-Based Learning