What is Service Learning?

Service learning is a credit-bearing, educational experience that combines both community service and academic learning.

Students are expected to:

• participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs
   
• enroll in a course that requires a minimum of 15 hours of faculty/agency supervised service activity
   
• reflect on their experience and its impact on the community and their relationship to the world around them
   
• develop greater self awareness, social responsibility, and desire for civic engagement
   
• learn to care more about the needs others
   
• develop the attitude and skills to affect community change in our diverse multicultural world

What Service Learning is not:

• un-supervised volunteer activity
   
• an experience lacking “hands-on” learning opportunities
   
• performing tasks unrelated to the agency’s mission for community engagement
   
• a requirement to complete community service as discipline for behavioral or academic infractions
   
• a semester long internship designed to develop skills related to the student’s major and career interest

Key Elements of Service Learning:

• both the student and the service learning provider/agency receive mutual benefit
   
• the agency’s target population also receives benefit from the student’s activities
   
• service learning experience is directly related to the student’s course learning objectives
   
• student reflects during the preparation, participation, and post-experience stages
   
• provides diverse and challenging experiential activities
   
• develops higher order critical thinking, problem solving, and analytical skills 

For more information on the benefits of participating in the Service Learning Program contact:

Robert Bulsza, LPC
Director of Internships and Service Learning
Career Services Center
PO Box 261954
Conway SC 29528

Phone (843) 234-3450
Fax (843) 349-2718

rbulsza@coastal.edu