Service-learning inspires students, assists community

Megan Grilliot, a Wright State student pursuing a degree in social work, was unsure just what career path she wanted to take, but once she began to tutor children at Westwood Elementary in Dayton, her mind was made up.

“I knew I wanted to work with kids, but when I went to Westwood and saw the need for it, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

Grilliot, whose tutoring experience was part of a service-learning course, says the kids at Westwood taught her things she would never have learned in a college classroom, such as the differences in her experience and the experiences of the children she was tutoring.

“I was going in there with closed eyes, and when I got there, my eyes were opened significantly to something I had never seen before,” she says. “These kids had to go through all of these daily routines that were significantly different from how I grew up.”

The Office of Service-Learning was created in January 2007. There are service-learning courses available in the Colleges of Liberal Arts, Nursing, Education and Human Services, and the Boonshoft School of Medicine, to name a few. In fact, last year, Wright State received national recognition for its service-learning program when it was named to the 2009 President’s Honor Roll. Schools are chosen based on the scope and innovation of their service projects, percentage of students participating in service activities and the extent to which the school offers academic service-learning courses.

At Wright State, students can benefit from service-learning in many ways. It can help them decide their career path, as it did Grilliot, but it can also help them prepare for or sometimes land an internship or job.

Grilliot says her service-learning “will definitely help me get a job somewhere, or give me experience, or show that I am willing to dedicate some time out of a week to volunteer. It’s good for a résumé, it’s good for experience and it’s good for personal growth.”

Some service-learning courses address local needs. Others take students off campus and out of Dayton, such as a course taught by Senior Lecturer Hunt Brown and Sara Twill, assistant professor of social work, who will take a group of students to Athens, Ohio, this spring. The goal of this trip will be to work with local agencies to promote environmental and social sustainability, participate in day projects involving watershed development, plant for an organic farm that supplies food to local food pantries and work with low-income senior adults.

Cathy Sayer, director of service-learning at Wright State, would like the Office of Service-Learning to expand into a center for civic engagement.

“I think that all of the long-term programming should look at what the needs in our community are,” she says.

Both Sayer and Grilliot agree that one of the most important areas for service-learning to focus on is public education. Sayer says she would like to work on improving academic achievement in area schools, as well as “to help children from low-income families who’ve had little in the way of resources or role models, to help them prepare for futures that are bright with possibility, instead of being burdened by the past.”

Grilliot has a similar view. “I think education is where we can actually get the kids. They’re legally mandated to go to school, so that’s where you can take a child and change their life.”

Whether education, social work, medical research or volunteering in Appalachia, it’s clear that the people who participate in Wright State’s service-learning program are passionate about what they do.

Sayer offers individual consultations to faculty interested in service-learning. Grilliot has continued her work with Westwood students, using it to fulfill her major requirements. “It takes everyone to build a community up,” says Grilliot, “and I think that’s one thing the service-learning program is trying to focus on: assessing the needs of the community and taking Wright State students and incorporating that into what our community needs. By doing that, we’re bettering ourselves, bettering our community and bettering the future.”