Decades of scholarship on teaching and learning affirm the benefits of public service internships on student learning outcomes. Studies emphasize how hands-on fieldwork can increase students' substantive knowledge, political efficacy, trust in government, and civic participation, among other factors. However, most articles treat internships…

Relational Developmental Systems (RDS) provided an integrative framework to examine how college students' intrapersonal attributes, particularly sense of identity in transactions with different educational experiences, were related with self-reported community and political engagement and other intrapersonal dimensions. Students who participated…

Various commissions and reports have called on colleges and universities to better prepare students for participation in a democratic society. A limit of such reports is that they often fail to consider how students might be categorized relative to their shared patterns of civic behaviors. Relying on alumni survey data from American College…

The current study compared perceptions by college students (n = 304; M age=19.75 years old) enrolled at an urban and diverse Roman Catholic university on self-report measures of faith/belief structures, social justice, and community service attitudes. Survey results indicated that both horizontal and vertical faith maturity perceptions…

This mixed methods study considered the relationship between the civic development of college students participating in the Serve Program at Ignatius University and the influence of these students' parents. The Serve Program is a community service learning program that combines coursework in philosophy and theology with a year-long service…

Students entering Tulane University in 2006, 2007, and 2008, the years following Hurricane Katrina, were surveyed soon after arriving on campus and again after they had been at the university for two years. Attitudes toward a new public service graduation requirement, established after the storm, remained positive after students had completed two…

The Community Legal Information Center (CLIC) of California State University, Chico, provides a unique civic engagement program designed to serve the legal service needs of Northern California. Founded in 1969, CLIC is now a 12-program, on-campus law clinic staffed by up to 125 undergraduate students each semester and is the most extensive…

This report presents a detailed assessment of the extent to which "The Pittsburgh Promise"--a postsecondary education scholarship intended to remedy the area's population decline, foster high school completion and college readiness among Pittsburgh district students, and prepare a capable and energetic workforce for the city--has met its…

As New Orleans began to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, Tulane University also began its recovery process. A new initiative in the recovery was the establishment of a public service graduation requirement for undergraduate students. Attitudes toward the requirement were assessed for 290 first-year and 257 advanced students in fall 2006. The…

Examines the contemporary community service movement by using as a theoretical framework recent work on personal competence and voluntary prosocial action. Explores the connections between personal competence and helping behavior in college students. Findings indicate that the relative importance of personal aims is above social concerns. (JS)

This digest summarizes a full length report of the same title (HE 024 794) which discusses contemporary college students' apparent lack of understanding of citizenship and how it relates to positive career pursuits. A proposal is made to make students more aware of both the need for and the benefit of socially responsible citizens, and for…

Contemporary college students' apparent lack of exposure to citizenship, lack of concern for others, and ignorance of how to be involved citizens has prompted a call for involving students in volunteer service at the national level or as part of the undergraduate experience. This monograph begins by discussing volunteer programs as they relate to…