Champion of Service-Learning Garners National Attention

Over the past 23 years, UMass Boston's Dwight Giles has led service-learning activities that--in the spirit of John Dewey--have brought participants well beyond mere community service activities and into service-learning experiences linked to well-tended community partnerships and well-defined academic goals.

Since he arrived in Boston three years ago, after doing groundbreaking work at Cornell and Vanderbilt Universities, Giles has served as faculty cochair of UMass Boston's Service-Learning Advisory Committee (SLAC), has taught in the Graduate College of Education's Leadership in Higher Education program, and has worked with the New England Resource Center for Higher Education on issues relating to civic engagement and service-learning.

Since 1980, Giles has used service-learning in undergraduate, master's, and now doctoral-level courses. He has coauthored three books, written 19 articles and book chapters, given 13 papers and 83 conference presentations on service-learning, and been a consultant to nearly 50 campuses interested in developing service-learning programs of their own.

In fact, when people say that Giles wrote the book on service-learning, they"re not exaggerating. He is coauthor with Janet Eyler of Vanderbilt University of the seminal book Where's the Learning in Service-Learning? It has been called "required reading for anyone responsible for service-learning" by senior associate Edward Zlotkowski of the American Association for Higher Education.

Now Giles and Eyler have been named recipients of the 2003 Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award for Service-Learning. Over the years, they have worked together on numerous research and classroom projects. They were chosen to share the award because of their impressive efforts, both individually and as a team, in engaging their students in community service connected to classroom learning. They were chosen from a pool of 141 nominations.

'since 1980, when I began teaching in the Field Study Program at Cornell," says Giles, "my teaching has always been experiential and designed to be mutually beneficial to my students and to the community in which we were working." Giles is now working as co-investigator on a research project with Professor Silvia Dorado of the College of Management to study community campus partnerships in service-learning projects and programs. Giles is also looking forward to a three-week service-learning project this summer in conjunction with Columbia Point Community Partnership. His Graduate College of Education students will work with Harbor Point residents to gather and disseminate information about the college application process.

"By adding work on service-learning into required and elective coursework, Dr. Giles has introduced these issues to students who may have been unfamiliar with the goals, opportunities, and impact of service-learning--clearly an excellent way to extend the work to a wider field of higher education professionals," wrote Chancellor Jo Ann Gora in her letter of support for Giles.

This is Campus Compact's ninth year honoring service-learning faculty through the Thomas Ehrlich Award. Campus Compact is a national coalition of more than 900 college and university presidents who support the civic purposes of higher education. Campus Compact annually honors faculty members for innovations in engaged scholarship that integrate service into the curriculum and for efforts to institutionalize service-learning at their college or university.

The award will be presented in November at the Third Annual International Service-Learning Research Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. More information can be found at www.compact.org

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