Religious Studies News

While service learning as an approach to higher education has become increasingly common over the past decade, much less attention has been given to service learning opportunities at the graduate level. When looking for courses that might serve as inspiration for our course, I had trouble finding graduate-level service learning courses in general and could not find any religious studies service learning courses for graduate students. The courses I found tended to come from programs in social work, teaching, and related fields, suggesting that service learning was considered most appropriate for professions focused on service. Yet our hope was to incorporate service learning as a means to develop a professional and educational experience that could translate for our students into various spheres of future employment.

The most promising approach to service learning and community engagement that we found was a course at the University of Colorado, Boulder, taught in the English department by Christine MacDonald. I had mentioned to Anne DePrince, the head of the University of Denver’s CCESL, that we were struggling to find course models to inspire our own MA service learning course. She had recently heard Professor MacDonald speak: her course, "Grant Writing — Service Learning," had been featured at a "Service Learning 101" workshop organized by Colorado Campus Compact in February 2012, which Professor DePrince had attended. While I searched for scholarly and teaching articles on grant writing courses, MacDonald kindly sent me a copy of her syllabus as well as ancillary materials. We were sold — grant writing appeared to offer a winning combination of meaningful service opportunities coupled with the potential for unique and substantive intellectual and professional development. Although it was evident that this course would take a considerable amount of preparatory time and effort, MacDonald’s experience convinced us that our students would benefit, that the community partners would benefit, and that our program would benefit as well.