University-Community Engagement and Public Relations Education: A Replication and Extension of Service-Learning Assessment in the Public Relations Campaigns Course

This study replicated and extended Werder and Strand’s 2011 research by framing service-learning within the larger context of a university’s overall community engagement strategy and by including alumni within the survey population.  The findings supported a general service-learning assessment instrument measuring students’ perceptions of their development of key public relations skills, along with citizenship and social responsibility mindsets, as a result of their participation in community-based projects in a public relations capstone course. While the results, overall, were consistent with Werder and Strand's study, there were notable differences. For example, this study found that there were no statistically significant difference in means— by gender, time, and client type—for most variables. However, alumni who had worked for businesses in a town designated as an official community engagement partner had higher mean scores on three items: community involvement, strategic planning skills, and ability to work with others.  The findings contribute to the collective understanding of community engagement, public relations education and practice, and the lasting impact of service-learning on students post-graduation. Whether service-learning values such as citizenship and social responsibility "stick" after graduation is a key consideration for any profession, but especially for public relations

Practice Report: Student Health Ambassadors at Residential Campuses Contribute to Safer Campus Living and Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In summer 2020 six residential institutions of higher education (IHE) and the Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC) in Western North Carolina chose a collaborative approach to mitigating COVID-19 infection rates on campus. This approach shares the practices and successes of this concerted effort with a focus on a large public, medium public, and small private IHE. The campuses promoted a healthy and safe culture through a rigorous and transformational learning experience and focused on engaging Student Health Ambassadors (SHAs) in applying the Diffusion of Innovations model to peer-topeer gain-framed messaging for health. Three institutions’ programs are presented and cross-case analysis is used to illuminate transferable promising practices. Promising transferable practices across the schools include: selecting the right students, strong institutional support, the three Ps (positive, proactive and prevention-focused), building leadership skills, and peer-led campus culture change. Transferable insights from the practices at three campuses focused on the role and impact of peer-to-peer student health ambassadors on campus to mitigate the spread of COVID-19

Go Big or They’ll Stay Home: Using Service-Learning to Reclaim the Moral and Societal Purpose of Education

Rationale for the topic For the Ancient Greeks (5th century B.C.), the purpose of education was clear – to move people from being idiots (the Greek word for being concerned with one’s self) to citizens empowered and informed enough to contribute to democratic governance. John Dewey (1916) echoed this sentiment with his belief that “the role of education is to teach individuals how to become more interactive with their social environments in order to co-create those environments.” More recently, in an editorial in the New York Times, The Big University, David Brooks (2015) contends that in the current context of 24/7 content, the only purpose of bringing people together for education is “to thrive at those things that require physical proximity. Very few of us cultivate our souls as hermits. That includes moral and spiritual development. We do it through small groups and relationships and in social contexts.” The three-part model of service-learning that includes academic content, service, and critical reflection (Clayton et al., 2005) is an opportunity for education at all levels to reclaim its moral and societal purpose and to reflect John Saltmarsh’s and Matthew Hartley’s (2012) charge for education “to serve a larger purpose” and for higher education, in particular, to play a critical role in fostering civic engagement and democratic participation. This model of service-learning has proved to be effective in enhancing students’ academic engagement, sense of citizenship, and personal growth (e.g., Perry, 2011; Eyler and Giles, 1999) in many different contexts. This presentation will focus on the effectiveness of service-learning in promoting the larger purposes of education in the post-disaster contexts of Christchurch, New Zealand after the devastating earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 and Long Island, New York after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. In both situations, university students provided relevant service through relief efforts and were asked to critically reflect on their actions in light of their cultural and social contexts and with regard to what others have had to say about this in literature, philosophy, and religion. Goals for the presentation The goals for participants in this presentation are for them: to consider the purpose of education within their own cultural and social contexts to analyse the findings and lessons learned from the case studies in Christchurch and Long Island to determine how these lessons can transfer to any context, particularly if global challenges such as inequality, climate change, and conflict can be dealt with locally. Ways in which participants will be engaged The format for the presentation will be interactive and experiential in that participants will be asked to engage with each other about their views as to the purposes of education and how these relate to service-learning. Participants will be invited to connect with the Christchurch and Long Island case studies on personal and intellectual levels and then translate the findings from those case studies into their own contexts. Further, participants will experience an example of how students in those situations were led through a critical reflection process

Introduction to the Section: Student Outcomes (Primary, Secondary and Higher Education)

The section editors of the Student Outcomes section report with appreciation on the abundance of high quality research and theoretical literature that is currently available on student outcomes of service-learning and community engagement. Today’s research is less atheoretical and narrowly focused on specific courses and outcomes of interest and better grounded in more sophisticated conceptualizations about the effects of student participation in service-learning and community engagement and an empirically stronger knowledge base. The section editors introduce five articles that exemplify these positive trends, including two replications and extensions of previous work. The section editors then challenge scholars of service-learning to broaden the scope of future studies by contextualizing them within global issues facing society and presenting the role that education faculty and community engagement professionals might play in addressing these issues. They provide a unique model for designing and conducting these future investigations