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Heard of the “Willamette Bubble?” It’s a term
euphemistically thrown around by students and faculty to describe
how the University’s comfortable environment sometimes insulates
too well the world outside of campus. Well, meet a group of Willamette
students whose class experience pokes more than a few holes in the
“bubble” myth.
For the past semester, freshman Juline Walker ’07 and Logan
Van Ert ’07 have canvassed the neighborhood southeast of Willamette’s
campus. Their mission was to knock on doors and get local residents
to fill out a survey about their involvement in the local Neighborhood
Watch program. The survey was designed, administered and its results
compiled and presented by Walker and Van Ert for an innovative new
course called “Citizenship and Apathy.”
Developed by political science Professor Melissa Buis Michaux,
“Citizenship and Apathy” is at the vanguard of a campus-wide
movement to create courses that effectively bridge classroom teaching
with real-world service learning experiences. Former Community Service
Learning Director Mari Schwalbach said, “There are various
names for it, but colleges across the nation are doing what they
call experiential education because they’re finding that it’s
critical for long term success. When our students graduate, they
do much better if they’ve taken the concepts and ideas they
learn in class and applied them in practical situations.”
Michaux’s course examined how communities where activism
and civic participation are high tend to benefit and remain vibrant
from an accumulated “social capital.” By requiring students
to volunteer in civic organizations that are involved in encouraging
the development of social capital, Michaux helped students connect
an abstract concept with concrete reality. “If you ask people
‘Is it good to be involved in community?’ they almost
always say ‘yes,’” she says. “The trick
is to translate community involvement and volunteerism into political
action – to see the connection between volunteerism and political
action. Getting students to experience that connection has been
the real value of this course.”
Michaux’s students volunteered for a variety of organizations
that covered the political spectrum, from the Oregon GOP to the
Oregon Bus Project. Walker and Van Ert worked for the Southeast
Salem Neighborhood Association (SESNA) to develop a survey that
would provide the organization with vital information about the
neighborhood’s attitude toward Neighborhood Watch. Walker
and Van Ert far exceeded the required 30 hours and poured more than
140 hours into the project.
Looking back on the project, Walker says the experience has been
a wake-up call for how she views her relationship to the Salem community.
“I have to admit the first semester I was in the bubble because
you’re so wound up in your classes. I think this experience
was a good first step for Logan and me in just getting outside of
Willamette and taking part in building the community.”
Freshman Martin Krall ’07 has been interested in politics
since high school, but even he admits he didn’t know exactly
what he was getting into when he signed up for the course. “I
think having a ser-vice component made the course more interesting
because what we learned in class we also experienced in our internships.”
Krall spent the semester working for the Oregon Bus Project, a
Portland-based nonprofit organization that travels to communities
throughout the state to increase voter turnout and promote “progressive”
candidates. As one of a handful of volunteers, Krall received a
unique education about how grassroots voter campaigns are organized
and run. “I really got the chance to develop some skills and
see how people network to create a larger social movement.”
If the students feel they’ve gotten a lot from the course,
that sentiment is shared by the organizations they’ve been
helping. Angie Hedrick with the Department of Community Services
for Salem has been working with Willamette since 1997 when SESNA
was created. She says the Citizen and Apathy course is another example
of how Willamette has found many non-monetary ways to contribute
to the revitalization of the city. “Usually businesses and
places like Willamette, the first thing they get asked for is money.
We started thinking about students as assets that could significantly
benefit the neighborhood.”
The idea for service learning classes is a relatively recent development
at Willamette, but it has caught on quickly among the faculty. While
the numbers vary semester by semester, Schwalbach estimated that
about three-quarters of Willamette’s academic disciplines
have faculty that include service learning or experiential education
components in their courses. Schwalbach said this isn’t surprising
given the increased demand among students for courses that offer
this kind of extra experience. “I think what’s happening
now is that students are getting the lingo. They’re hearing
the term. They’re figuring out what it means. If they have
a choice between classes, they’re choosing the ones that have
the service learning component.”
Schwalbach hopes this trend will continue to strength-en the relationship
between Willamette and the community while offering a significant
experience for students. “I’m really honest with people.
I don’t think you do this work to build your resume, but I
think it’s ok to admit that this is a great benefit. It just
makes for a better educational experience because you learn so much
more.”
In Van Ert and Walker’s case, they can add a little item
to their resumes about changing the face of Salem’s Neighborhood
Watch program. “As you can see, this is real world stuff and
it is so timely for Salem,” says Marci Hope, a librarian at
Willamette’s J.W. Long Law Library and a SESNA member who
worked closely with the freshman duo. “This information will
be useful for all of the neighborhoods in Salem – that’s
the beauty of it.”
Indeed, as this story was being written, Walker and Van Ert presented
their research to the Salem police and other community leaders.
Discussions are already underway about how to use the information
to strengthen the city’s Neighborhood Watch program. “The
consequences of this project are going to reach more than 130,000
people,” says Hope. Not only that, but Walker and Van Ert
can definitively claim that they’ve laid the Willamette bubble
myth to rest.
– Brad Millay ’97
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