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| 1 |
Establish Center
for Community Service to coordinate, support, and highlight efforts. |
- Appoint a faculty director to ensure strong links between off-campus experiences
and the curriculum.
- Develop repository where community service opportunities and requests can be
maintained and coordinated.
- Establish Smith Center for Social Action to link classroom, research, and activist
experiences and interests to the benefit of both students and surrounding communities. (Martha
Ackelsberg) SD3-1
- Expand the current Educational Outreach effort into an Office of Educational
Outreach and Engagement to provide a single point of contact and coordination for
campus efforts; professional development for faculty, staff, and students; logistical
support for planning, funding, assessment, implementation, and reporting; and effective
communication of results. (Gail Scordilis) SD3-2
- Create a Community-based Learning and Research Center to support community based
learning and research on a model of social justice and highlighting community empowerment. Such
a center would provide logistical administrative coordination, intellectual coordination,
faculty development and student training, as well as resources for assessing the
outcomes of particular initiatives. (Lisa Armstrong, Ginetta Candelario,
Susannah Howe, Donna Riley) SD3-3
- Develop institute model to organize efforts in student volunteering and community
service, and increase resources available for community service and social activism. (Jennifer
Walters, Tiertza Schwartz) SD3-4
- Provide logistical support for courses and other activities with a community
service component, including transportation and scheduling assistance.
- Draw on staff involvement in community service.
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| 2 |
Integrate internships
and service learning more fully into the curriculum, including coursework,
thesis work, and independent projects. Use Praxis more effectively and tie
it to curricular issues. |
- Develop capstone experience involving community service. Extend engineering
design clinic model to social sciences built around community service and social
issues.
- Combine community-based learning with interdisciplinary undergraduate research
through an Interdisciplinary Research Clinic. (Leslie King, Alan Bloomgarden,
David Smith) SD3-5
- Incorporate community service component to study abroad experience. Develop
interdisciplinary seminars for students on JYA programs organized around community
service or topical current issues that lend themselves to interdisciplinary treatment. (Janie
Vanpee) SD3-6
- Provide one-credit six-week courses around selected themes, such as AIDS.
- Engage professors of the practice with experience in community service to strengthen
linkages and connections among academic disciplines and community and social issues.
- Better link Praxis internship opportunities to community service opportunities
and academic programs.
- Revive internships for credit and independent study options already available
as vehicles for student service learning opportunities. (Margaret Bruzelius
/ Committee on the Junior Year Experience) SD1-2
- Purchase or lease house in Holyoke to serve as a "settlement house" in
which faculty and students develop programs and complete research that will improve
life in Holyoke and serve as an educational experience. (Richard Millington) SD3-7
- Develop plan to continue previously grant-funded community partnership work in
North End of Springfield. (Phil Peake) SD3-8
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| 3 |
Engender a college
culture emphasizing and celebrating community service. |
- Highlight community involvement opportunities in communications with prospective
students during the admission process.
- Incorporate local alumnae as resource for students working on community issues.
- Incorporate community service opportunities into first-year orientation, first-year
seminars and house activities.
- Select community service-related theme for campus annually.
- Sponsor an annual conference to celebrate student and alumnae contributions to
their surrounding communities.
- Implement "second transcript" to recognize community service experience.
- Use January term as an opportunity for community service projects.
- Impart sense of social usefulness on students as they move through college.
- Include social justice house dialogues, facilitated by students, faculty and
staff into the orientation program for new students. (Common Ground
Diversity Committee) SD1-4
- Revitalize the diversity chair position on House Council to foster collaboration
between house Council and Residential Life programming as part of an Ongoing Dialogues
initiative. (Common Ground Diversity Committee) SD1-4
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| 4 |
Develop initiatives
to support civil discourse through "difficult dialogues" for students. |
- Expand opportunities for faculty to develop the "civil discourse" and "moral/ethical
reasoning" components into their courses.
- Develop "bystander training" program to equip students with
the skills and confidence to play an active and appropriate role in uncomfortable
situations.
- Develop more opportunities to make thorny issues, either on campus or beyond,
more public perhaps through an "At Odds" format.
- Model "public intellectual" behavior, imparting to students to skills
to talk about important public issues and to appreciate alternative views.
- Provide more opportunities to meet as a larger campus community to discuss important
issues.
- Support faculty initiated dialogues and debates with invited speakers on contemporary
issues.
- Teach students how to make a point more aggressively – "sharper elbows
with thicker skins."
- Encourage students to paraphrase others’ opinions in coursework, particularly
seminar settings.
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| 5 |
Provide pedagogical
training for faculty as to how to integrate community service components into
their courses. Offer a series of pedagogical workshops for faculty on "ways
of learning" to provide pedagogical development for integrating internships
and service learning into courses; to expand opportunities for faculty to develop
civil discourse, ethical reasoning, and social justice components into their
courses; and to support faculty in their efforts to engage students from diverse
backgrounds in their courses. (Common Ground Diversity Committee) SD1-4 |
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Strengthen
Essential Student Capacities
Promote a
Culture of Research, Inquiry,
& Discovery
Encourage
Purposeful Engagement with Society’s Challenges
Deepen Students’ Awareness &
Appreciation of
Other Cultures &
Global Issues
Prepare Women
for Rewarding Lives in a Rapidly Changing
World
Support & Promote
Environmental Sustainability
Open Doors
to
Women of Promise
Extend Smith’s
Impact on the World
Other Proposals
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