Rachel Wade, a fourth-year communications studies major, jumped at the chance to pad her resume and build a portfolio of work by completing a Community Service Learning (CSL) course. Through CSL, the Faculty of Communication and Culture is breaking new ground in teaching students to utilize their liberal arts education. The faculty has partnered with eight non-profit organizations to offer CSL opportunities to its students and is finding the experience is a win-win-win for students, non-profits and the university.

"While they're in school, students traditionally don't have much chance to practice the skills they gain in a liberal arts degree outside of a pure academic context," says Doug Brent, associate dean with the faculty. "In community service learning courses they consciously bring their academic skills to bear in solving real-world problems and they reflect analytically on what they learned from the experience."

Wade and three classmates worked with Calgary Reads, a local non-profit organization offering literacy programming to children in 60 Calgary schools, through the winter semester. Their goal was to develop a volunteer recruitment strategy. They began conducting interviews and focus groups. Based on an analysis of this data, they identified challenges, opportunities and other resources for building and marketing a volunteer-tutor recruitment program for Calgary Reads. For Wade, it was a chance to practice four years worth of academic and research skills in a work place setting and contribute to a project where she can really make a difference.

"The course is similar to doing actual consulting work and shows that as university students and graduates we have the skills to take this kind of work on," says Wade. "The final report is something substantial I can put in my portfolio and show an employer how I've put my skills to work."

Dariel Bateman, Executive Director of Calgary Reads, says that through the student's initial research they found that high needs schools have a smaller parent-volunteer group from which to draw volunteer tutors and that prospective volunteers from other neighbourhoods are reluctant to come into high needs locations.

"The students are bringing new knowledge and research to the Calgary Reads volunteer engagement program," she says. "We have already gained a better understanding of how to market volunteer opportunities and the students have helped us to articulate our values and our mission. We have received valuable information to help us serve our programs."

The courses were developed in response to liberal arts students asking for practical opportunities to apply their skills.

"A liberal arts education prepares students to define a problem and investigate it using research skills," says Brent. "They learn about culture and society, how people work and interact, and skills like writing, public speaking and interpersonal skills and they learn to think critically. The advantage is these skills give our students and graduates an outsider's point of view - the ability to see problems differently from those within an organization."

Brent adds that the courses are an important way for the university and students to give back to the community and they demonstrate that the faculty is developing engaged citizens who have an understanding of community and world issues and can apply their skills to make change.

By Jennifer Myers