Learning for a cause: Service-Learning Fellows share student engagement is higher in service-learning courses

The Pearce Center Service-Learning Faculty Fellows Program offers a year-long opportunity for faculty to develop service-learning courses with an incentive of a $2,500 fellowship award. This program connects faculty committed to integrating research and public service into teaching., During the program, faculty members build service-learning courses and collaborate on best practices to ensure course success. 

The opportunity to meet fellow professors equally passionate about service- learning as she is drew Spanish professor Magdalena Matuskova to the program. Matuskova started teaching at Clemson in August of 2022, having prior experience teaching service-learning classes at other institutions. Despite her experience, she initially struggled to implement her own service-learning course at Clemson due to certain obstacles she encountered that she had not faced at previous institutions. Discovering tThe Service-Learning Faculty Fellows Program helped Matuskova navigate Clemson’s unique challenges and strategic plan for service learning, enabling her to learn effective techniques from other professors.

Another Service Learning Fellow, David Williams, believes that “a healthy learning institution is one that prizes community outreach [and that] a service-learning class is an ideal way to put that thinking into practice.” 

Through his service-learning class, Williams’ students partnered with the nonprofit organization Echoes and Reflections, “a nationally recognized non-profit organization that creates and distributes educational resources about the Holocaust. Students work in groups to research, script, and record a 20 to 25-minute educational podcast. Their scripts are also combined into one large transcript, which is offered alongside the podcast to ensure accessibility.” 

Though the course load is ambitious, Williams’ service-learning project “challenges students to hone their composition skills, work across different media and assume greater responsibility for prolonging Holocaust memory.”

Matuskova’s Spring 2024 course focuses on teaching students “basic techniques, skills and strategies to translate in written form between Spanish and English.” 

She divided her students into two groups: one partnered with the Veggie Rx program under the School of Public Health to translate menus and recipes, while the other worked with the Invasive Beetle Outreach Program under the College of Agriculture. Each group’s work supports local communities in different regions of South Carolina. Matuskova observed that students were more engaged in their coursework, knowing it would impact the community.

A key reason Matuskova values service- learning is because she has seen today’s students face challenges of feeling uncomfortable communicating face-to-face and working in teams. She has also found that students fear making mistakes and feel peer pressure to be perfect. These fears hinder language learning in a traditional classroom setting and also “might translate into bigger problems when students enter the workplace.” 

Service- learning helps students break out of their shells and understand that making mistakes is a part of the learning process. 

According to Matuskova, students “realize that superficial knowledge is not sufficient, and service-learning assignments fuel their motivation to grow further, research, and improve their writing in Spanish overall,” transforming their engagement in class from “transactional (for a grade) [to] more real.” 

Throughout the course, Matuskova found that “students become more comfortable asking questions and asking for advice.” 

Williams also supports service- learning because he wants students to see their learning as more than just for a grade and instead as something that will “enrich their academic and personal lives for years to come.” He has found that “service-learning gives [students] the satisfaction of having made an impact in the broader community while gaining valuable professional experience in the process.” 

His chosen project for the semester emphasizes collaborative work and professional communication, and he stresses to them that these skills are valuable in job interviews. When talking about why service- learning is important for students, Matuskova similarly noted that she “saw students running away from challenges at the beginning of the class and working through them with their teams in the end.” 

The confidence students learn through interacting with community partners cannot be taught in a traditional classroom setting. 

Service- learning has powerful impacts on both students and nonprofit organizations. While students learn valuable life skills that they can take to the job market, they also provide invaluable help to organizations that often have limited resources and funds. Williams notes that “the more help [nonprofit organizations] receive, the easier it is for those organizations to meet their goals for the betterment of others … Forging a connection between a university and a nonprofit creates that much more exposure for the vital work that the organization is engaged in.”

Join the Service Learning Fellows Program to foster student growth and support local communities.

By: Mary O’Dwyer