Whitworth Center for Service-Learning & Community Engagement marks 10-year anniversary
|
| Photo by Taylor Zajicek, '11 |
Rhosetta Rhodes, the energetic director of Whitworth's Center for Service Learning & Community Engagement, can't keep herself from using metaphors to describe the ways students and faculty serve people in need in the Spokane community.
"We're giving them fish to eat for a day, and we're teaching them to fish for a lifetime," Rhodes says. "But we're also helping to provide access to the pond for generations to come."
The center has been involved in a lot of fishing in the 10 years since it was established. The number of service-learning courses at Whitworth has grown from five in fall 1999 to 91 last year, and the number of students involved in service has burgeoned from about 100 to more than 2,200. Students served a total of 63,538 hours in the community last year, providing an estimated benefit of
$1.3 million to the Spokane area.
Much of the university's service and community engagement is focused on Spokane's West Central neighborhood, which is among the poorest in the state. Whitworth students and faculty are collaborating with West Central residents and organizations on workforce development, business development, neighborhood revitalization, and a neighborhood plan to address poverty, housing and community services.
Whitworth was one of just five institutions nationwide selected by the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund in 2007 to develop a student-run philanthropy project aimed at recommending grants to nonprofit organizations serving West Central. Most recently, the center has added mediation and dispute resolution to its repertoire of community resources.
While service-learning remains the center's pedagogical core, Rhodes says she is excited about the ways in which students and faculty are taking initiative to strengthen and expand the university's engagement with the community. She has organized a series of events throughout the year to mark the center's 10-year anniversary.
"We're not just engaging in short-term, ‘drive-by' service; we're involved in sustainable engagement," Rhodes says, before launching into another metaphor. "When you ask someone who is moving bricks what he's doing, one person may say, ‘I'm moving bricks.' You ask another person doing the same work what she's doing, and she'll say ‘I'm building a cathedral.' We're building cathedrals."
|
