Director's reflections
Building on innovation
Reflecting as both the previous Associate Director, and now Director, I can say with certainty that Margo Fryer’s leadership proved instrumental in leading the movement for the integration of community service learning as a critical pedagogical component of student learning in Canada and at UBC. As UBC enters into this next phase, it is my role to ensure the innovations begun under Margo’s leadership continue. With that as my guide, it is my intention to build on her accomplishments by advancing the fundamental ways that the University conceives of student learning and community engagement.
I am fortunate to follow Margo’s strong leadership and am equally fortunate to be surrounded by incredible talent in the community and at this University as the efforts of the next phase will depend greatly on the work of all. As noted in Margo's reflections (as stated in the Fourth Annual Report to the J. W. McConnell Family Foundation – October 2011 [1.0MB PDF]), the phase that comes next requires the UBC-CLI to remain intentional in its consideration of the interests and priorities of the community and this concern will remain central to our work going forward.
Bringing CBEL to University discussions
The move to the Vice-President, Students portfolio reveals innumerable opportunities to engage students in and with communities in deeper and unexplored ways. I choose to understand the move as a necessary next step in the evolution of CSL at the pedagogical level and the potential for greater and more far-reaching community engagement at the University level.
With the emergence of discussions across the University centred on enriched educational experiences, there is a great opportunity to move the conversation from one foregrounded on definitions of CSL to one centred on how do we infuse all community-based experiential learning (CBEL) opportunities with those components that have made CSL such an effective tool in fostering student learning and sustained community engagement.
Shifting the role of the UBC-CLI
The UBC-CLI has been explicit that reflection, and the expectancy that students grapple with questions of power, marginalization, social location, and their role in society, are central to CSL pedagogy. This has led students to experience deep tensions in learning where the mix of discomfort and opportunity coalesce to inform philosophical change and critical thinking within the frame of academic and social discourse.
The locus for reflection, however, is not the UBC-CLI’s alone. Reflective practices combined with deep community engagement are tools, when deployed successfully, that hold great potential to contribute to student learning not only in the community but with and from the community. Understanding this necessitates a shift in the role of the UBC-CLI. The role becomes one in which our expertise supports not only our Faculty partners seeking to integrate CBEL into course curricula but also supports other University units whose students are working in and with community (e.g., Career Services, Co-Op, Undergraduate Sustainability Initiative, Go Global, individual and club student-led initiatives, and many others).
Creating a new model
Attention to community-based experiential learning in the broader sense of activities, programs, and opportunities for students and the faculty and staff who support them, provides a framework within which to explore the contours of the student’s and, importantly, the community’s experience. In this new model, the identification of partnership opportunities should be expansive enough to engage course-based and co-curricular CSL students, as well as, internships, co-op placements, capstone research projects, student-led initiatives, and others.
As the scope of these opportunities broadens, and the need for a cross-disciplinary lens is identified, students from diverse faculties participate alongside one another in the resolution of complex community-based priorities in both short- and long-term efforts, thus increasing the likelihood of sustained community engagement and the creation of ongoing and sustainable partnerships. This model succeeds when the form of the experience – for both the student and the community – is valued as clearly as the attribution marking the experience and the silos defining one experience over and above another are lessened.
A model, such as the one noted above, will no doubt require coordination, difficult to achieve at an institution this size, but the return on investment in our students and our communities is one that extends well beyond what the UBC-CLI can achieve alone. If we are successful, I would argue that attention to how we define and measure success is where we will begin to see the greatest cultural change at the University and among our graduates.
Susan Grossman
Director, UBC-Community Learning Initiative
