AMES, Iowa -- The National Service-Learning Clearinghouse reports on the growth of service-learning nationwide and Iowa State University is doing its part with a variety of related projects.
There are design students creating a new tribal college campus; honors students constructing classrooms in rural Mexico; MBA students working to save a traditional newspaper amid a new digital age; and apparel, educational studies and hospitality management (AESHM) students revitalizing Iowa downtowns -- among many other projects.
"These projects help students not only apply knowledge from courses, but also develop problem solving skills, and sharpen their persuasion, negotiation, team-building and leadership skills," said Ann Marie Fiore, an AESHM professor. "For faculty, service-learning provides an opportunity to lead through example, which enhances student learning."
Fiore and fellow AESHM professor Linda Niehm have annually had students from their Entrepreneurship in Human Sciences classes work with Iowa communities to revitalize their downtowns. This semester, they worked with the Grinnell Chamber of Commerce.
Serving the Iowa National Guard
Elsewhere in the College of Human Sciences, Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction Ana-Paula Correia reports students in her classes are providing instructional design help to eight clients this spring. And last fall, students in her Evaluating Digital Learning Environments class evaluated a marksmanship simulation program for the Iowa National Guard.
Nine Iowa State honors students not only took service-learning outside the classroom, they took it outside the country. They participated in the first Service Learning Seminar in Oaxaca, Mexico -- a two-credit course that featured a 10-day trip to the southern Mexico state to help construct rural classrooms.
Associate Professor of Architecture Lynn Paxson led a design class that helped leaders of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College (CATC) envision the possibilities for a new campus that will assist the Nations in meeting their cultural and scholastic goals. CATC is currently housed on the campus of Southwestern Oklahoma State University, but leaders want to develop the tribal college into an accredited institution with its own campus.
"This project gave students a chance to work with a cultural group with whom they would normally have little or no contact. And the tribal community had the advantage to see the future of their campus through the eyes of designers," Paxson said. "Students develop a personal connection to projects when they work with real clients, and it motivates them to do they best job they can."
While design students are creating the vision for a college campus, MBA students are helping Drum Corps World -- a 38-year-old newspaper for drum and bugle corps enthusiasts - to survive and thrive. Led by Associate Professor of Management Information Systems Anthony Townsend, students worked with Steve Vickers, owner and publisher of the Madison, Wis.-based publication, to adapt his business model to the rapidly changing digital news era.
Helping hatcheries
Another MBA class worked with Lucien "Bud" Wood, a 1978 Iowa State graduate who now runs the Murray McMurray Hatchery in Webster City. It bills itself as "the world's largest rare breed hatchery," and ships more than 100 different breeds of chickens, turkeys, ducks and other fowl across North America. Jen Blackhurst, an associate professor of logistics and supply chain management; and Brian Mennecke, an associate professor of MIS, guided students as they helped Wood address bottlenecks and delays in processing and shipping the birds.
A different kind of hatchery was addressed by students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences' fisheries science class. They assessed commercial and recreational fisheries in Dickinson County and presented their recommendations to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
"Science with practice is a concept strongly associated with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and nothing embodies this concept more completely than applying classroom knowledge to a real-world problem in a service-learning project," said Clay Pierce, a collaborating faculty member in natural resource ecology and management, who teaches the class. "They [students] know about the DNR and they know they'll be working on similar problems in their careers, so it is inherently more interesting to them than some hypothetical exercise."
In an electrical and computer engineering senior design class, students are working with such clients as Iowa Health Systems, Digi International, the Iowa National Heritage Foundation and Lockheed Martin on their high tech needs. Chris Chu, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, is even advising a team working with IBM to explore the use of multi-core processors to speed up circuit placement.
From massive IBM to much smaller businesses and agencies closer
to campus, the roster of Iowa State service-learning projects
continues to grow. And so does the students' practical
knowledge in the process.