Achieving the Partnership Principle in Experiential Learning: The Nonprofit Perspective

Abstract

University and college experiential education takes many forms: internships, practica and other field experience, volunteerism, community service, and community-based service learning, as well as community activities attached to college courses. Given the joint involvement of university and community institutions in experiential education and the diverse motivations for encouraging student community involvement, this academic practice can be viewed through three lenses: (a) as a form of student learning, (b) as a public policy instrument to promote student civic engagement, and (c) as a service delivery tool for community organizations. Much of the research about student service learning has emphasized the first of these perspectives, examining service learning’s impact on a student’s pedagogical experience and the campus ability to support service learning. This article focuses on the nature of the partnership between campuses and community organizations. We begin with a discussion of how prior literature describes this partnership and then use generalizable community data to explore what host organizations suggest are the most useful partnership characteristics.

Keywords:

• service learning
• experiential learning
• university and community partnership

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Beth Gazley

Beth Gazley is associate professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University–Bloomington, and an affiliate faculty member in the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. Her research addresses questions related to nonprofit and governmental management capacity, including collaborative capacity, the role of nonprofits in local government emergency planning, and effective service learning and volunteer management models. She uses service learning in her undergraduate nonprofit management course and is a recipient of two statewide service-learning awards.

Teresa A. Bennett

Teresa A. Bennett is the founding director of the IUPUI Solution Center, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) office of outreach and community engagement. The Solution Center, a unit of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, is responsible for increasing awareness of IUPUI’s engagement mission and for matching the interests of the community to the talent of faculty, researchers, and students on the campus. Ms. Bennett holds a Master of Public Affairs from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication from Purdue University.

Laura Littlepage

Laura Littlepage is a faculty member at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis and associate faculty at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy as well as a senior researcher at the Indiana University Public Policy Institute. Her research addresses questions related to the effectiveness of nonprofits. She teaches a service-learning class—“Do the Homeless Count?”—that students participate in as data collectors. She has been the principal author of numerous publications and several journal articles.