Service-Learning and Experiential Education

Election Day is coming up soon -- today, Christian and Amanda discuss some tips on getting students engaged in voting! What are some resources, tips, and activities that you've used to engage your students in elections? Please drop your tips in the comments! Check out the Campus Election Engagement Project's toolkit: https://www.nonprofitvote.org/documents/2016/06/campus-election-engagement-toolkit.pdf/

Today on the podcast, we have one of the recipients of this year's Excellence in Service-Learning Faculty Award from Virginia Commonwealth University, Dr. David Coogan! With Dr. Winterbottom, he discusses the inception and process of Writing Our Way Out, a collective of formally incarcerated writers that he leads through memoir-writing. They also dive into doing service-learning without direct institutional support and his most recent effort to divert community members with low-level offenses from the courts to the classroom. After listening to this episode, check out the Writing Your Way Out website (writingourwayout.com) and podcast (https://writingourwayout.com/thepodcast/)!

To wrap up September, we welcome Dr. Ashley Patterson from Penn State and Dr. Emily Nemeth from Denison! With Christian, they give advice for new faculty on incorporating service-learning at a new institution with a new community context, explain the difference between service-learning and critical service-learning, and discuss possibilities for keeping digital service-learning critical, knowledge production, multimodality in class projects, living within the systems we're critiquing, and incorporating empathy into every part of our academic lives. Additionally, we get to hear about the book they are working on, which touches on doing service-learning that focuses on power, navigating institutional boundaries of learning, the untapped potential of service-learning, and turning ideals of service-learning into praxis. It's a busy part of the semester, but this is an excellent episode to tune into this week!

In today's episode, we welcome Dr. Ithel Jones, professor in the School of Teacher Education at Florida State University! Fun fact: Dr. Jones was part of the reason Dr. Christian Winterbottom was brought to service-learning. They discuss infusing service-learning into teacher education programs and public school pedagogy, Dr. Jones' advice for faculty and doctoral students who want to incorporate service-learning in their work, and his current research about leveraging service-learning to build positive relationships in the classroom. Tune in, and reach out to Dr. Jones if you want to collaborate at ijones@fsu.edu!

In today's episode, we welcome Sojourner White, MSW, who is a Project & Media Strategist at UBUNTU Research and Evaluation, a racial equity consultant, and a freelance writer and travel blogger! Interviewed by Dr. Lynn Pelco from Virginia Commonwealth University, Sojourner discusses social entrepreneurship, her experiences traveling as a Black woman, intercultural dialogue about race and gender, and her advice for service-learning faculty. Tune in, and then check out Sojourner's website (www.sojournies.com) and Instagram (www.instagram.com/thesojournies)!

We're excited to share our interview with Dr. Bernard Means, assistant professor of anthropology at Virginia Commonwealth University and the Director of the Virtual Curation Lab! The Lab's goal is to share the world's cultural heritage through 3D scanning and printing. Dr. Means and Amanda discuss digital preservation that makes history and culture accessible and engaging, scientific literacy, and the most interesting things he's scanned! After listening, check out the Virtual Curation Lab (vcuarchaeology3d.wordpress.com) where you can find the cardboard plans and coloring pages Dr. Means mentions, and this video looking at Dr. Means' work with Henrico County Public Schools (youtu.be/N0rUzP0YfsA).