This webinar will focus on three practices that facilitate achievement of high impact community-engaged learning (service-learning). Participants will develop a deeper understanding of cultivating reciprocal relationships, using a project management approach, and educating about context. Each practice will be paired with processes to provide options for implementation. Examples will be drawn from the development of service-learning at St. John Fisher College as the founding director of the program and a stand-alone service-learning course called Social Change through Service. A faculty colleague will provide additional illustrations.

 

Presenters:

Lynn Donahue is the Assistant Director of the Institute for Civic and Community Engagement at St. John Fisher College and the founder and director of the College’s community-engaged learning (service learning) program. Under Donahue’s leadership, Fisher engages 700 undergraduate and graduate students per year in community-based projects, embedded in course curriculum, to address the client and capacity-building needs of the College’s community partners in education, poverty, health, and sustainability. She is a published author and trainer on topics including reciprocity, pedagogy and assessment, engaged scholarship, project management, and leadership. Lynn Donahue is also the recipient of several grants to enhance children’s social-emotional learning and awards for her participation in community and civic engagement.

 

Professor Marta Rodríguez-Galán received her B.A. in licensure studies at the University of Oviedo, Spain; her M.A. in Hispanic studies at the University of Rhode Island, and her Ph.D. in sociology at Northeastern University. Her dissertation project was awarded the Farnsworth Trust Fellowship in Aging Policy Research (2006-2007). For the past few years, she has been conducting research in the areas of aging, health, social engagement, and family, with a particular focus on Hispanic/Latino/a communities in the United States. In her current research project on Latina grandmothers who are raising grandchildren, professor Rodríguez-Galán explores the interconnections of gender, immigration and the life course, and how these shape the women’s interpretations of the mother/grandmother role. Her work has been published in journal articles and book chapters in the field of social gerontology.