Showing My Cards

I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Kibbs that a mission statement could go a long way in helping us verbalize our place in the Calvin community and articulate Calvin's relationship with Grand Rapids. I think it could also help us push the envelope better by giving us a framework with which to hold Calvin accountable to the third leg of its mission. Finally, it could help us set some exciting goals for integrating service-learning work with the missions of other student organizations like the Social Justice Committee and the Environmental Stewardship Coalition. If we have a mission statement that invokes the value of social justice, we could maybe then garner more visible recognition among the student body as a resource for students who want to engage in action for social change. A lot of our student staff do this kind of work already, but we have recognized some disconnect between our work and the work of many students who do service-learning.

One of my projects this year has been examining the mission statements and organizational structures of service-learning programs at peer institutions. This is a fascinating topic - well, at least to me!

To get the ball rolling, I've selected a few of the most interesting mission statements from the institutions I studied. Let me know - do you find them articulate, vague, wordy, provocative, stimulating, thought-provoking? What parts would we want in a mission statement of our own?
The Service Learning Institute
Cal State University, Monterey Bay"The mission of the Service Learning Institute is to foster and promote social justice by cultivating reciprocal service and learning partnerships among CSUMB students, faculty, staff and the surrounding tri-county community."

The mission statement comes with a longer Philosophy Statement and the following Student Learning Goal: "Our goal is for CSUMB students to become multicultural community builders: students who have the knowledge, skills and attitudes to work effectively in a diverse society to create more just and equitable workplaces, communities and social institutions."
Elon University
Kernodle Center for Service Learning"The Kernodle Center for Service Learning at Elon University, in partnership with local and global communities, advances student learning, leadership, and citizenship to prepare students for lives of active community engagement within a complex and changing world."

Marquette University
Service Learning Program"Following in the Jesuit tradition of faithful service, the Service Learning Program at Marquette University facilitates student academic learning through meaningful service experiences, which encourage and enable Marquette's faculty and students to positively impact the community. The Service Learning Program seeks to bring campus and community together in partnership to share resources, meet real community needs, and help to educate women and men to become the change agents of tomorrow."
Trinity College (CT)
Office of Community Service and Civic Engagement"The mission of the Office of Community Service and Civic Engagement is to build strong, sustainable partnerships with the Hartford community and to strengthen service, community commitment, and civic responsibility as central to Trinity's institutional mission as well as to the experience of each member of the Trinity College community. The Office realizes this mission through the creation and implementation of a comprehensive and cohesive array of civic and service programs that engage students, faculty, administration, staff, and alumni."

Service-Learning: A Luxury Reserved for the Powerful?

Is service-learning merely a nicety, an extra-curricular activity reserved for those with the luxury of spare time? The luxury of spare time often correlates with power, constituted by affluence and influence. Is it then that service-learning is the tool of those with power, set over and against the marginalized? As such, do the claims of service-learning theorists and practitioners to promote justice and reciprocity ring hollow with the vacuous tones of hypocrisy? I think these are questions any service-learning practitioner must face, and do so with the real possibility that the answers could draw into question some some of the basic foundations concerning one's interactions with the world. If we cannot question the very motivations and meanings latent within the radical practice of service-learning that we advocate for, then what substantial benefit can we possibly have?

On Mission Statements

I agree with Bryan about a mission statement for the Service-Learning Center at Calvin College.  It would be great if we could come up with a clear, modest, and easy-to-hold-accountable mission statement.

Part of the challenge in coming up with one is the multi-dimensional nature of the work we do.  I have mentioned before that there are at least three primary and distinct populations that our work is designed to serve: students at Calvin, local partner agencies, and faculty at Calvin.  Developing a concise mission statement runs the risk of preferencing one of these groups over the other.  It doesn't have to do this, but it runs this risk.  For example, is it our mission to participate in the education of Calvin students, assist in their faith formation, teach them some skills in cross-cultural communication, and meet their needs for service hours?  Is it also our mission to reduce injustice in our local community?  To provide volunteer labor to struggling non-profits, as well as large public institutions?  To conduct useful research that might serve the city and address some of its problems while acknowledging its strengths and many resources?  Is it also our mission to provide pedagogical challenges and support to creative and thoughtful faculty members at our college?  And what about the other local colleges, and the many nationally, who look to our office for leadership and advice?  Is it our mission to serve these colleagues as well?  I say yes, to all of the above, and many others.

Maybe there is a way to narrow all of these dimensions into one mission statement.  Or maybe we need a vision statement, a set of values, and a mission statement for each of our identified strands, or dimensions.  Regardless, I think some strategic planning is in order...

Of the Table

Eating food is, I think, a deeply personal and vulnerable act. If there was ever a place where our oddities, quarks, twitches, and bad habits were expressed, the dinner table would be it. It is interesting then that so much of our shared community with others happens around the meal table. "Let us break bread together" is that cry to share our personal and vulnerable space with another person. So what do our tables look like? How large or small are they? How many seats do we have at them, and who is allowed a seat?

Service-learning, I think, is especially concerned with the nature of the table. Service-learning resists a model of one way service, but rather advocates for a reciprocity in which there is a dynamic exchange. As such, service-learning is about creating a space for dialog and mutuality. Service-learning practice, at its best, is in the business of crafting strong tables where bread can be eaten with others, and authentic community imbibed. It then remains the perpetual task of service-learning practice to ensure that there are enough chairs at any given table, and that more and more people are afforded a place at the tables that populate our lives. For this task we must be committed to constantly questioning our assumptions and constrained perspective. It is this process of questioning assumptions and beliefs that we then forge the materials to build new chairs for more people to sit at the table.

Accountability and Why We Need to Articulate Our Mission

I work in the Service-Learning Center at Calvin College as a student coordinator. If you were to ask me what I do, what we do as an office, I could tell you many things. We organize an event called Streetfest that exposes new students to service-learning in Grand Rapids, we establish partnerships with many non-profit agencies in our community and work to build connections on Calvin's campus with those agencies, we work to promote specific longstanding service-learning partnerships in each of the residence halls, and the list goes on and on. Visit out website www.calvin.edu/admin/slc and you will find a myriad of the various things that we are involved in, but you will NOT find an explicit mission statement or a clear vision statement that explains WHY we do all of these things. I am writing this blog post to challenge our lack of a mission or vision statement.

Is our lack of a mission or vision statement a shortcoming on our part? I think it very well might be. I do not think there is anything magical about a mission or vision statement. Just because an organization has a statement of direction and intent does not mean that it actually follows it. In fact, from my perspective, there are many terribly written mission and vision statements that are doing nothing for an organization or the community it serves. Such statements sound great, but are so awash in ambiguity that they fail to have any meaning because there is nothing to actually hold on to, they are empty statements, full of overly sentimental fluff.

My position is that if you are going to have a mission or vision statement, then you need to do it right, which means, be modest, be clear, and offer something that you can be held accountable to. This sounds remarkably akin to a thesis for an essay. We would not regard an essay as well written if it did not have a thesis, but yet we accept our ongoing lack of a mission statement as okay. The notion of accountability is what drives my desire to see our office have a mission and/or vision statement. My fear is that because we are the service-learning center, and connected with this notion of "service" which in our society is generally regarded as a very good and positive thing, that we are then not held to high standards, our methods go unquestioned and are not examined with any significant amount of rigor. I think we should be questioned, examined, and held to high standards. Service-learning is a powerful tool that can do some unbelievably amazing things in individuals and communities, but it can also do some profoundly terrible things. As such, no organization that is oriented to fostering and sustaining service-learning should go unexamined, failing to be held accountable.

I would like to see the Service-Learning Center at Calvin College develop a mission an/or vision statement that is modest, clear, and something that we can be clearly held accountable to. So I ask sincerely, why don't we have a mission or vision statement? Is this a major shortcoming on our part? What are some suggestions for possible mission or vision statements?

Learning in Community

I was shocked when I read it, the Time Magazine "Person of the year" is me. Well, not me particularly, it is all of us, the bloggers, the IMers, the YouTubers, the cyber generation committed to expressing our own views and opinions through accessible technologies for a mass audience. Many have observed that in the midst of all that is good about these new communication technologies, there is a certain egoism at play. I am still undecided on this point, but regardless, I will admit that the broad access provided by new communication technologies has, ironically, atomized our existences from one another even amidst allowing us to come into contact with more people then ever before. There is a tremendous amount of speaking happening in the world today, but it is not as clear that there is as much listening happening. Many believe that they have something to say, but not many are willing to listen to others around them and before them. I worry that we are drowning one another out with the sound of our own voices, failing to actually inhabit the space of learning with another person by listening to them.
Service-learning does not happen in a vacuum removed from this growing tendency to assert one's own position and voice while failing to listen and learn from others. My hypothesis is that when we engage in service-learning, we are oriented to service necessarily taking place in community, however we imagine the learning as an internal, isolated process and event. That is, we imagine a going out of ourselves to serve another, but then we return back into the interior of our own minds to learn. To be sure, genuine learning does restructure and enhance the inner working of our minds, and has an autonomous aspect, but learning is not exclusively this. I assert that learning at its best, and most especially in the case of authentic service-learning, must happen in the community as well. Here, I imagine an actual dialog taking place in which we actively process our experiences out loud with other individuals from within and outside the communities we serve and live in. I would venture further to say that there is a desperate need for mentoring relationships when especially engaging in service-learning. Contrary to the isolation of speaking without listening, mentoring relationships help to ensure that we find wisdom and guidance from something outside of ourselves. Amidst the sometimes disorienting nature of service-learning, mentors can offer us a safe place to grow and rebuild after having knocked down false assumptions and other bad habits of thinking and doing.
To anyone that will engage in service-learning, I say, serve in community, but also learn in community. Against the predominant tread of societal interactions, seek out mentoring relationships as an essential part of the service-learning experience.

Streetfest '07 Orientation (Video Clip)

Each year the Service-Learning Center at Calvin College organizes and carries out an event for new, incoming students called Streetfest. This event takes place over three days, with different groups of students each day. The general approach is to send students out into the community to local organizations where they can learn about the Grand Rapids community as well as serve that community. This event is a fast introduction to the rich and complex idea of service-learning, and certainly has its pros and cons. Each year the Streetfest coordinator develops a theme to center the event around, this past year Laura Wolff, the Streetfest coordinator, chose the theme of Revive, Restore, Renew (a play on the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle slogan). This video clip*me.

*Clip no longer available