
The Service Learning Program is an educational program that is designed to offer
students a chance to learn from the experiences of working with others in the community.
The program provides students with the opportunity to extend their education beyond the
classroom walls and into the working community so that they may enhance their ability
and shape the society in which they live.
The goals of the program are rooted by the School's Mission Statement and the belief
that community participation, when combined with reflection, supplies a rich tapestry
of social and intellectual experiences that can give meaning and purpose to classroom
learning. While using the community as an arena for reflection and action, students
are challenged with learning hands-on about relationships between individuals and their
communities.
By helping students make connections between learning and living, growing and caring,
this type of experience-based program encourages them to question, analyze, interpret,
and most importantly, act on the social conditions that pervade their lives. Coupled
with the knowledge that they make a difference in the lives of others, any academic
material will seem more important, for it has a powerful connection to life and to the
things that make life meaningful.