Campus Compact invites the submission of higher education syllabi to include in our Service-Learning Syllabus Archive.

In our review of syllabi, we evaluate with the following criteria in mind (a broader discussion of these criteria can be found in our publication, The Fundamentals of Course Construction):

• • • Engagement: Does the service or engagement component meet a public good? How do you know this? Has the community been consulted? How? How have campus-community boundaries been negotiated and how will they be crossed?
    • Reflection: Is there a mechanism that encourages students to link their service experience to course content and to reflect upon why the service is important?
    • Reciprocity: Is reciprocity evident in the service component? How? “Reciprocity suggests that every individual, organization, and entity involved in the service-learning functions as both a teacher and a learner. Participants are perceived as colleagues, not as servers and clients” (Jacoby, 1996, p.36).
    • Public Dissemination: Is service work presented to the public or is an opportunity made for the community to enter into a public dialogue? For example, do oral histories that students might collect return to the community in some public form? Is the data students collect on the saturation of toxins in the local river made public? How? To whose advantage?

Beyond these overarching course design consideration, we expect all new syllabus submissions to include most or all of the following criteria:

• • • Heading, that includes the university name, department, course title, catalog number, semester/year, and faculty contact information
    • Description that introduces the nature of the service-learning project and the community-identified desire or challenge the project meets
    • Course introduction that articulates the relevance of service or engagement component to the course
    • Course goals that articulate the general education outcomes for the course
    • Clear expectations about the time and locations in which students are expected to serve
    • Course objectives that clarify for students what service learning outcome(s) the faculty member will be measuring
    • A description of how students will be expected to demonstrate the academic and civic learning they developed through their community-engaged experiences
    • Required texts/ readings
    • A weekly schedule of readings and activities
    • An overview of course assignments
    • A description of the service-learning assignments that includes specific information about the service activity.
    • An overview or explanation of the grading policy (that includes a discussion of who will evaluate the students’ community work.) This overview should connect course objectives to the allotted percentage points that faculty assign projects, papers, journals, presentations, etc.

We are interested in syllabus submissions from all disciplines or areas of study, and we are particularly interested in those from the following types of courses:

• • • First-year seminars and/or learning communities.
    • Senior capstones.
    • Inter-disciplinary courses.
    • Courses that directly address or engage racial justice and equity issues.
    • Sequential courses or cases in which all or most of a students’ core courses are service-learning courses.

If you are interested in submitting your syllabus please contact Clayton Hurd at churd@compact.org.