Pre-Conference Workshop I
Wednesday, November 12 9:00am–5:00pm
A Theoretical, Practical, and Dialogical Approach to Understanding Service-Learning
Chair: Elaine Acacio, CIEE Santiago, Dominican Republic
Presenters: Janet Eyler and Mark Dalhouse, Vanderbilt University; Community Panel
Though educational reforms gave birth to the Service-Learning philosophy in the late 1930s, the Service-Learning movement is young, and it is only recently that educators and institutions have gained understanding of its significance and support for the benefits to student learning. Service-Learning has gained a lot of attention in recent years; though, there is not a clear consensus of its objectives given local and global contexts as well as the multiple actors involved in the process. What is Service-Learning? What is the impetus for Service-Learning in higher education? Service-Learning involves not only the students and the faculty, but also members of the community. How then is its significance different to each of these key participants? What do students, faculty, and the community need to know to prepare for this type of integration?
This full-day workshop will encompass the fundamentals of Service-Learning and will be broken up into three parts:
- Part I will present a brief history of Service-Learning, discuss the impact of service-learning on students, share best practices from a theoretical and experiential perspective, and consider the importance of fostering community relationships and preparing students in the field.
- In Part II, a community panel will share their experiences on how Service-Learning impacts their organizations and what role they play in the serving and learning process.
- During Part III, workshop participants will break into smaller groups to visit various community organizations and participate in group discussions co-facilitated by Vanderbilt University faculty, CIEE Resident Directors, host community organizations, and student participants. This will provide participants the opportunity to ask questions and engage in a discourse about the effectiveness of the Service-Learning approach.
Pre-Conference Workshop II
Wednesday, November 12 9:00am–1:00pm
Managing for Success in Study Abroad
Co-Chairs: Stevan Trooboff, CIEE and Michael Maginn, Singularity Group
With increasing student and faculty interest, a proliferation of program options, and a more sustained effort to internationalize campuses, study abroad offices must now, more than ever, contend with a host of complex management challenges—human resources, marketing, budgeting, and systems—in addition to traditional concerns involving academic quality and programmatic issues. This pre-conference workshop will focus on setting goals and priorities, evaluating performance and managing difficult employees, influencing people you don’t manage, and a myriad of other management topics essential to today’s effective manager of study abroad operations. If you are a person with management responsibility for people and programs at your college or university, you will benefit from this workshop by taking home specific skills and actions plans for implementation.