Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This research provided understanding of the concept civic-minded professional. A civic-minded professional is one who is(a)skillfully trained through formal education, with (b) the ethical disposition as a social trustee of knowledge, and (c) the capacity to work with others in a democratic way, (d) to achieve public goods. Forty-four items were developed for the Civic-Minded Professional scale based on a multi-disciplinary literature review. The scale was part of an online survey distributed to a national sample of faculty in higher education (n=373)to evaluate the reliability (alpha = .95) and validity of the scale. Exploratory factor analysis reduced the scale to thirty-two item and five factors (i.e., voluntary action, citizenship, social trustee, identity and calling, consensus building).

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This chapter describes the implementation of two service-learning courses within the setting of a primary-care clinic for homeless and indigent individuals. The two courses are a campus-wide Introduction to Community Service and a Community Health Nursing Practicum. Although these two courses have different learning outcomes, they both address the primary goals of service-learning, including (1) developing students' understanding about the responsibility of citizenship and preparing students for effective roles in society; (2) improving students' communication skills, problem-solving skills, and project-specific skills; (3) enhancing students' self esteem and sense of social reality; and (4) providing an interdisciplinary perspective (Kendall and Associates 1990). The sections that follow describe the setting that the two service-learning courses share, the university-wide course, and the community health nursing practicum. Common issues faced in both courses that are discussed include reflective learning practices, community/client impact, communicating expectations to the student and the site personnel, collaboration to accomplish both service and learning outcomes, and practical issues associated with service-learning in a clinic for the homeless and indigent.

The present research consists of a comparative study of Brigham Young University's Golden Age Comedia (GAC) and Golden Age Theater Production (GATP) courses. The two courses cover much of the same academic material, but one of the differences between the two approaches to the teaching of Golden Age literature is that the GATP course incorporates a theater production and outreach component. Although this outreach program has been seen as intuitively and anecdotally effective, there has been no prior attempt to document student motivation for choosing this course over the traditionally taught course (GAC), nor to discover any of the outcomes experienced by university students who participate in it. Similarly, there have been no studies conducted to compare the educational outcomes of the two approaches. Therefore, the present empirical study was conducted with the goal of determining student motivation and expectations for course selection, academic outcomes of each approach, and whether any additional intellectual or personal growth was experienced by students in the GATP course. This study revealed that there indeed are differences in the motives and expectations behind students' decision to enroll in the GAC course rather than the GATP course, and vice versa, and that each course yields different outcomes for those students. Students receiving instruction through the GATP Outreach program appear to be able to attain a similar mastery of the course material as those in the GAC course. Furthermore, through the inclusion of the outreach program, students are able to acquire additional skills and enriched attitudes that have the potential to prepare them for future studies and life experiences. For universities interested in implementing a similar production and outreach program, this study provides evidence that such a course can indeed provide an alternative path to the teaching of Golden Age literature at the university level and that it proves to be an attractive alternative to certain students that is worth their time and effort.

Volunteerism is positively associated with various benefits to university students. Perhaps for this reason, some educational institutions are paying students to participate in volunteerism. Conversely, the cognitive evaluation theory suggests that monetary rewards may undermine intrinsic motivation and decrease the likelihood of future participation in volunteerism. However, there has been little empirical research done regarding this issue. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of monetary rewards on university students' intrinsic motivation to participate in a volunteerism activity. While the findings indicated a subtle trend supporting the cognitive evaluation theory, an analysis of the data demonstrated no statistical significance, thus suggesting that further research is needed in order to understand the application of the cognitive evaluation theory to volunteerism.

This thesis empirically tests whether university-related volunteer service, international experience, and service-learning have a positive moral impact on students and whether the peer reference group moderates this relationship. I use a measure of morality based on the recent work on values by Shalom Schwartz. A novel approach to measuring the social psychological phenomenon of the peer reference group is used in which the relative strength of the peer reference group is measured. The peer reference group was included in hypothesized models as a moderator between volunteer service, international experience, service-learning, and moral growth. Cross-sectional survey data of 633 engineering students was used, and most hypothesized relationships lacked statistical significance. However, university-related volunteer service has a positive and statistically significant relationship with morality. Post-hoc analysis gives some evidence that the peer group and individuals within the peer group may be the antecedent of how a student values volunteer service, international experience, and service-learning.

Drawing on literature about place-based education and service-learning, as well as three groups* perspectives about their service-learning experiences, this research describes how place (understood simultaneously as a material agent, a setting for human activity, and a factor in an individual*s situatedness) and identity (understood in terms of one*s social position) are socially- constructed concepts that impact students* writing and learning experiences. More specifically, this project presents place-based education as a teaching method that can focus and reinvigorate service-learning in a writing course. Including place-based content and service-learning projects in a writing course requires careful design and reflection. However, course design should not be an activity limited to just teachers. In alignment with feminist research methods and standpoint theory, this research values and privileges the perspectives of stakeholders who are not normally included in the course design process: students and community partners. To present a rich account of these stakeholders* experiences designing, implementing, and participating in a place-based service- learning project, a combination of qualitative data methods (interviews, classroom observations, and textual analyses) is used. This information serves as the basis for the design of a place-based writing course with a local service-learning component. The proposed course asks students to work with community partners to identify a place-based need that can be addressed—at least in part—by writing-related service. By collaborating with community partners, creating writing products that address community needs, and reflecting on how their identities and learning experiences have been impacted by the places they*ve worked and the communities they*ve worked with, students can apply their knowledge in meaningful contexts, write for real audiences, and develop more thorough understandings of the places where they study, work, and live.

Case study design, employing qualitative research methods, was used to document and examine a mandatory service-learning program at a new, comprehensive, public university. The study examined service-learning from multiple perspectives. Institutional theory provided a framework for examining the influence of the environment on the conceptualization, adoption, and implementation of service-learning. Program theory was used to identify and analyze the program's conceptual underpinnings, including goals and objectives, intended outcomes for students, and program processes. Knowledge of how a program is supposed to work is useful for developing assessment questions, evaluating institutional effectiveness, and improving program performance. The study included a review of the history of service-learning at the university. Data were collected during the fall 2005 semester and were analyzed using both process and variance modes. Data sources included the following: 35 documents, which spanned the years 1991-2005; interviews with seven faculty members and four academic administrators; and observations of three meetings of service-learning courses, a Government and Not-for-Profit Service Learning Job Fair, and five meetings where service-learning was a primary topic of discussion. Previous studies served as the basis for the following researcher-developed constructs used to code text across data sources: social/civic outcomes, personal outcomes, learning outcomes, and career outcomes. Findings suggest that the goals and outcomes associated with service-learning found in university documents clustered around social and civic involvement, while outcomes reported by faculty during interviews focused on students' personal development and learning related to course content. In general, university documents contained goals and objectives written in vague language, a finding consistent with previous studies.