COURSE DESCRIPTION:

ROCI4485 is an outgrowth of the purposes and objectives of the University. The series of activities integral to the community involvement course enhances the education of the student, compliments the senior seminar, and promotes reflection on the student’s obligation to human beings in need and society at large.

GENERAL EDUCATION PROGRAM (GEP) ETHICS CATEGORY/COURSE OBJECTIVES & GOALS:

Successful completion of this course fulfills the General Education Program Ethics category. The course addresses the category programmatic goals and supports the GEP through the following course objectives and goals:

• Stimulating a culture of civic engagement, renewal, and advancement of the public good through curricular learning, teaching, and scholarship, and by developing an understanding of moral theories of western civilization.
• Preparing students for active citizenship and democratic participation by learning how moral theories affect our thinking about public life.
• Building the capacity of SSU to establish, maintain, and strengthen community partnerships.
• Providing students an opportunity for reflection on the nature of community involvement and the related contemporary societal, moral, and ethical issues.

REQUIRED CLASS TEXT AND MATERIALS:

• Marianne Larned. Stone Soup for the World: Life-changing Stories of Everyday Heroes. New York: Three Rivers, 1998. ISBN: 0-609-80969-5.
• Supplemental notes and materials for ROCI4485, as assigned.
• A e-journal for reflection. The journal will be due for instructor review every three (3) weeks, for a total of five (5) reviews for each student during the course.
• Community Involvement Covenant Form (copy attached) on-file with the instructor.

COURSE REFERENCE:

Laurent A. Parks Daloz, et al. Common Fire-Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex World. Boston: Beacon, 1996. ISBN: 0-8070-2005-2.

INTERNET COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT RESOURCES:

• Ohio Campus Compact http://www.ohiocampuscompact.org/
• ServeOhio – The Ohio Community Service Council. http://www.serveohio.org/
• The Civic Mind http://www.civicmind.com/index.html
• What is Service Learning? http://www.mssa.sailorsite.net/define.html

WRITING REFERENCE:

William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. The Elements of Style (paperback, numerous editions)

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT COMPONENT:

This course has an out-of-class component of engagement in the community. Engagement in the community is a response to a call into the community to help and assist others in need. Students will be advised of community needs where there might be a call for them to respond, or they can elect to seek their own call in the community. An objective in responding to a call is that a servant relationship exists between the responder of the call and the recipient (the individual or group being served), and not to serve in the abstract, at a distance.

Students currently enrolled in an SSU course requiring an internship, engaged with agencies or programs that provide services to community in any professional or non-ROCI capacity, or who are doing service through a religious, social, fraternal, organization cannot use these placements to fulfill the community involvement component of this course.

The thirty (30) hours of community service can be varied during the term. No more than eight (8) hours can be spent in activities such as blood drives, Operation Christmas Child, SSU Thanksgiving Dinner, Tour of Lofts, and similar functions where there is no direct and personal interaction with an individual being served.

An ROCI485S Reflections on Community Involvement Community Involvement Covenant Form must be on-file with the instructor as part of the student’s documentation for each community involvement affiliation.

The student’s community service component must be documented in a journal that records dates, times, locations, and the nature of the engagement. At the conclusion of each engagement, the student is expected to reflect on the experience, to discern patterns of lives that have been positively or otherwise affected by the engagement, and potential short-term/long-term outcomes.

The journal will be due for instructor review twice during the semester and at the end of the course for a total of three (3) reviews for each student during the course (REV:01/13/09).

The journal will be personal between you and me, and not shared with anyone without your express permission.

MIDTERM REFLECTION:

There will be an in-class mid-term reflection essay.

END-OF-TERM REFLECTION:

There will be an in-class end-of-term reflection essay.

ASSIGNMENTS AND OUT-OF-CLASS WRITING COMPONENT:

All written work (journals and in-class writing excepted) must be word-processed, spell-checked, and proofread. Please do not submit handwritten work. It will be returned un-read and un-graded. Assignments are due on the due date. Emailed assignments will be accepted if their time and date stamp are either prior to or on the due date. Emailed assignments should be in MS Office Word format so they can be opened and read. Email documents prepared in formats other than MS Office Word format should be sent either as .txt or .pdf files so they can be opened. Students are encouraged to responsibly read, critique, and revise their work as follows before it is submitted:

• Look at the content of the work with the intention to improve the choice of language, originality, organization, completeness, and coherence.
• Examine the work by editing it for style.
• Correct the work by looking for mechanical errors.
• Correct the work by looking for technical errors.
• Improve the work by applying new skills, understandings, and competencies.

My evaluation of written work will be by content, ideas, conceptualization, and synthesis. Mechanics and grammar, clarity and content, and conciseness will also be considered. Grades will be reduced for poor quality including sloppy workmanship, incomplete sentences, unintelligible answers, inattention to details, and not following instructions.

Students are recommended to retain a copy of all written work submitted. Assignments rejected because of poor quality or those that are determined to be electronic copies will be returned to the student with a grade of zero (0). Generally, assignments will be read and returned within one week.

GRADING SYSTEM:

The student’s final grade is determined as follows:

Community Involvement Reflective Journal:

 The journal is dishonest, the journal completely ignores the basis of the course, or the journal is incomprehensible due to errors in language or usage, the student’s grade for the course shall be “F.”

 The journal is submitted with no Community Involvement Covenant Form on-file with the instructor: 10 points maximum

 The journal lists, narrates, or describes events but contains little or no reflection on the student’s community involvement (0-5% of the journal is reflection); Community Involvement Covenant Form is on-file with the instructor: 11 to 20 points maximum

 The journal lists, narrates, or describes events and contains average reflection on the student’s community involvement (6%-15% of the journal is reflection); Community Involvement Covenant Form is on-file with the instructor: 21 to 40 points maximum

 The journal lists, narrates, or describes events and contains more than average reflection on the student’s community involvement (16%-25% of the journal is reflection); Community Involvement Covenant Form is on-file with the instructor: 41 to 60 points maximum

 The journal lists, narrates, or describes events and contains substantially above reflection on the student’s community involvement (25%-37% of the journal is reflection); Community Involvement Covenant Form is on-file with the instructor: 61 to 80 points maximum

 The journal approaches a 50-50 balance) between narration and description of events and reflection; Community Involvement Covenant Form is on-file with the instructor: 81 to 100 points

The journal grade will be the average grade received for the three (3) required submittals. Each submittal will be reviewed to the above criteria.

GENERAL COURSE OUTLINE:

Topic 1: Introduction. Community Involvement Opportunities.

Topic 2: Writing a reflective journal.

Topic 3: Asking yourself, “Who am I?”

Topic 4: Our Circle of Care: What faiths and philosophers say about community, ethics, and “Who is my neighbor?”

Topic 5: People who made a difference. Communities, intentional or otherwise; people in community; activists (Jacob Riis, Dorothy Day, Gandhi, Rev. M. L. King, Jr.)

Topic 6: Sweatshops and tenements.

Topic 7: Making it by faking it: the loss of truth.

Topic 8: More ethics (Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Kant) and some important words for the 21st Century.