Institute for Service Learning Wins State Award 

SALISBURY, MD---Salisbury University students enrolled in Mary Kane and Marylane McGlinchey’s Community Health Service Learning class went to prison last spring.  Not because they did wrong, but to do right by talking to prisoners at ECI about preventing cancer.  Dr. Gerald St. Martin’s Modern Languages students had to rely on their Spanish at a home for street children in Cuenca, Ecuador, where their final project raised funds to buy the children shoes.  Such unique opportunities are part of SU’s Institute for Service Learning’s (ISL) goal to integrate academics and service to others.

“The students got outside the classroom and interacted with groups of people with whom they would not normally meet,” said McGlinchey.  “They realized and were humbled by the fact that these people are similar to themselves and to those they meet in their daily life.” 

In recognition of its imaginative and effective efforts to engage students, faculty and community members in service, the ISL has received the Maryland Association for Higher Education Distinguished Program Award.  This honor came just before the Department of Service Learning at the Corporation for National Service renewed a $200,000 grant for next year.  This will allow SU’s Seidel School of Education, along with professors from Coppin State College and Towson University, to infuse service learning into education courses. 

“The grant and MAHE Award are seeds from which our program can grow,” said Dr. Nomsa Geleta, grant director.  “The people involved are committed to making service learning a sustainable part of higher education.”

The ISL program is important because Maryland is the only state which requires service learning, linking traditional classroom study to community service, in public schools.  But heretofore teachers received only limited training in incorporating service learning into their syllabi due to lack of funding.  Through the ISL’s partnership with Coppin State and Towson, within three years education departments on the three campuses will graduate 300 students each year who are trained in implementing the service-learning requirement.  

“The program fulfills an obvious need of the Maryland public school system,” said ISL Director John Shortt.   

The ISL has established several other programs, all means to the end of promoting active citizenship, community partnerships and student learning through service.  As well as recruiting volunteers for “Make a Difference Day,” a national day of service which takes place October 27, the ISL sponsors the Shore CAN Volunteer Center, the only campus-based volunteer center in Maryland.  SU’s America Reads and America Counts programs are part of the ISL as well.

“One Reaching Out to Touch Many: Service Learning for Educators,” a conference featuring keynote speaker Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and workshops highlighting best practices for K-higher education service learning, is June 29-July 2 at Salisbury University.  For information call 410-546-6015 or visit the ISL Web site at www.salisbury.edu/community/servicelearning/TECSL.htm.