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…

This paper explores how alumni of a multi-term public service program understand the connection between the program and their career development. Qualitative data were collected from 393 alumni based on six open-ended survey questions. While career and professional development is not an explicit goal of the program, a thematic analysis suggests…

Research on individuals' experiences engaging in outdoor education programs suggests participants are impacted in a number of ways. This study investigated the impact of participation in a wilderness education course on undergraduates' experiences with public service. This study asked the research question, what is the impact of an Outward Bound…

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…

This article contributes to conceptualisations of public engagement as part of academic practice in higher education. It uses Hannah Arendt's idea of action in the public sphere, which is underpinned by the belief that all have the capacity to contribute to the renewal of the world, and that we are equally different. It argues that public…

This study examines the transformative experiences of a group of academic coaches who participated in the Target New Transitions (TNT) program during the 2014-2015 academic year. The TNT program trains undergraduate students, through professional development workshops and reflective exercises, to serve as year-round academic coaches for first-year…

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…

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…

A service-learning project appropriate for a biochemistry or advanced biochemistry course was designed and implemented. The project involved students partnering with a homeless shelter to design informational pamphlets to be displayed at the shelter for the clients' use. The pamphlet topics were based on diseases studied within the course.…

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…

This mixed-methods study demonstrates that the SERVE Program at Ignatius University strengthened the public service motivation of participating undergraduates by combining weekly community service with readings in philosophy and theology. These findings offer insights about the role that philosophy and theology service-learning experiences can…

In this study, I explore the challenges, tensions, and opportunities facing a major research-intensive public university related to public service and engaged scholarship as the university system and higher education in general increase emphasis on service and engagement. This project was designed in cooperation with the university's Center for…

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…

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…

When service-learning began to gain prominence as a legitimate academic pedagogy in the early 1990's, it was believed that through intensive service experiences, students developed a greater understanding of themselves, felt empowered to make a difference in their community, made a connection to course material, and made a commitment to continue…