Key Center Faculty Fellowship

The Key Center for Community Citizenship and Service Learning, following the findings of research on effective service learning, seeks to help professors develop long-term partnerships with local organizations and residents to improve life in Western North Carolina. The center would like students to have opportunities to help the community with needs it has identified, while they experience rigorous “real-world” applications of the theories and research they encounter in the classroom. It would like faculty to have the opportunity to combine service with teaching, as well as scholarly and creative endeavors.

Thus the Key Center is offering stipends of $1,500 for up to three faculty members interested in becoming Key Center Fellows. Becoming a fellow would entail your forming or enhancing a partnership or partnerships before the Fall 2011 or Spring 2012 semester. That work would then lead to an initial project during the Fall or Spring semester in which you and your students undertake work on an issue of concern to the Western North Carolina community (i.e., the community selects the issue to be undertaken with you). The idea of the long-term partnership is that there is the probability of the work being sustainable and continuing past its initial phase in the Fall or Spring semester.

The students’ work in the partnership should go far beyond volunteering their time. It must have a strong tie to academic content – and the work should involve bringing academic skills (e.g., researching, writing, critical thinking, creating artistic work, and so forth) to bear on a community issue or need. It should result in a final product (e.g., a report or artistic work) that is provided to the community.

For example, cleaning up garbage is a volunteer service that doesn’t involve academic learning. In a Key Center Fellow project on litter, faculty could partner with a local environmental agency and students could then study the problem, present written results to the partner, implement new strategies for preventing littering in the first place and evaluate their effectiveness. Of course all of these may not be possible in an initial effort with one group of students. Rather, this example represents the possibilities of a long-term partnership.

The project could take place within a class or outside of it (i.e., with students not taking a course with you). If it is within a class, the project should be the central element around which the course is designed, not an add-on. The course must be a Service-Learning Designated Course, which means applicants must have participated in the Key Center summer workshop.

In addition, the class should be developed in conjunction with the partner(s), who should take on roles such as designing the syllabus and having a presence in the classroom. While this could be done with virtually any course, 379 classes for incoming transfer students and senior seminars are good candidates, because each tends to have a lower number of students and the ability to make the service-learning central. (179 courses can work as well, but freshmen may be less prepared for a rigorous service-learning endeavor. Transportation also is a barrier unless your partner has a bus, the partners can come to UNCA and work with students here, or your department would be willing to pay for transportation of students).

Possible projects include, but are not limited to a:

• Product Model, in which students create a product (e.g., work of art, video, ad campaign, documentary, software, database, handbook or manual) for a group or agency, with the goal of solving a problem, helping the community build on its strengths or helping the organization with its mission. Community members can create the product with students (e.g., children and a college student paint a mural), but this is not required.

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• Community-Based Research Model, in which students conduct archival research (e.g., reviewing scientific literature or existing documents) and/or collect and analyze data for an agency, with the goal of understanding a problem or how well the organization is doing in its efforts to combat a problem. Typically, students write a final report on findings for the agency. Examples include: investigating whether existing efforts to erase graffiti are successful; monitoring whether a water supply is contaminated or not; researching what is known in the scientific literature about reducing crime in a troubled neighborhood; investigating whether a public awareness campaign is reaching its audience; researching in scientific journals whether a proposed change in a local policy has had unintended consequences elsewhere.

Additional responsibilities of Key Center fellows include:

• Attending a series of monthly one-hour meetings over the next year.. The meetings offer opportunities to share ideas, successes, and frustrations. The group of Key Center Fellows also can help you with the development or assessment of your project.
• Reading selected book chapters and articles
• Having students regularly reflect on their community work, including how it applies to their academic work.
• Assessing the project. This means a formal examination of the impact on (a) your students, (b) the community, and (c) the community partner. Note that your students could be responsible for the assessment, making it part of their learning. The Key Center also can help you with advice on the assessment. Also note that a formal assessment creates enhanced opportunities for you and your students to publish the results of your work if you desire.
• Writing a brief report summarizing the partnership, outcomes of the work, and any future steps to be taken.
• Having your students present their work at a public gathering on campus and, if at all possible, in the community, as well as service-learning or other conferences.
• Using your experience and knowledge to promote effective, state-of-the-art service learning on the UNCA campus (e.g., presenting the story of your project at meetings or gatherings of faculty or community members).
• Completing a questionnaire evaluating your experience of the work.

Becoming a fellow is time consuming, but it can help you integrate and enhance the principal activities faculty are called to do – teaching, scholarship, and service.

Faculty interested in a grant to develop or enhance a partnership should apply with a letter that has:

1) A paragraph description of why you are interested in becoming a fellow.

2) A detailed narrative of your vision of how you would work with the community. This should be organized as follows [note that a separate brief paragraph for each of these is desirable]:

(a) who are the potential or existing partners and how you would work with them on selecting the project(s), with details on the project(s) you and your students will likely work on

(b) how the work ties to academic content. If the work is to take place within a course, show how the service-learning endeavor would become the central element of the course

(c) how you would assess the project’s impact on students, the community and community partner

(d) your timetable for the partnership. Partnership planning should occur before the semester in which it will take place.

(e) possibilities for continuation of the partnership past the initial project students work on (i.e., how the partnership might evolve into multiple projects).

3) A letter of recommendation and support from your department chair.

4) If possible, a letter of support from potential partners

The grant/stipend is to be paid as follows:

• $1,500 upon completion of the partnership work, evaluation, meetings, report, and student presentation
• Fellows are also eligible for up to $250 to pay for expenses related to the partnership

The deadline for applications is Monday, August 1st.. An electronic copy should be sent as an attachment to Joseph Berryhill at jberryhi@unca.edu.

A committee of professors will evaluate proposals and will provide a decision on acceptance.

We anticipate repeating the program, so any proposals not accepted will receive feedback and could be resubmitted in a subsequent year.

Criteria for evaluating proposals are:

• Clarity of the overall proposal
• A clear plan of how the community helps select and work on the project with you and your students
• Overall feasibility of the plan
• Importance of the issue(s) or need(s) to be worked on to the community
• Academic connection of the project and academic challenge for students
• Possibility of a long-term partnership (e.g., extending past a semester)
• If available, support from community partners
• Clear plan of assessment

Questions about the grant may be addressed to Joseph Berryhill, Key Center Professor, at 828.251.6832 or jberryhi@unca.edu.