Service-learning

Making a difference while learning in VCU’s service-learning courses

As a VCU student, you can start making a real difference in the world before you graduate. With more than 50 different service-learning courses, you have many opportunities to learn academic and job skills while at the same time meeting a real community need. Whatever your interest or major, you can find a VCU service-learning course that will take you out of the classroom and into the community to solve real world problems while you learn.

Service-learning at VCU is a course-based, credit-bearing educational experience in which students participate in an organized service activity that meets community-identified needs.

Learn more about service-learning at www.community.vcu.edu/solutions/servicelearning.

Course spotlights

MGMT 319: Organizational Behavior

Sections taught by Randy Sleeth, Ph.D.

Every semester, students in Randy Sleeth’s service-learning sections of the School of Business Organizational Behavior service-learning courses develop their own 45- to 280-member organizations to work with real nonprofit organizations from the local Richmond community to complete a project that meets a critical need in the community. In recent semesters, student organizations have performed community and park cleanups, assisted teachers with activities for elementary school pupils and delivered a health awareness fair.

VCU service-learning students, spring 2009
“I really loved doing the service-learning and the time went by too fast. I’m glad I was able to work with a community partner I didn’t even know existed. This experience really makes you aware of your career goals and how you want to further define or change them.”

“MGMT 319 Organizational Behavior was one of the most beneficial classes I took in college. The hands-on learning approach to teaching students how to handle business situations taught me strategies to effectively work in a team or group. In my opinion, this is one of the most valuable lessons that I could have learned before entering a work setting.”

VCU instructor, spring 2009
“Future success as effective managers and leaders requires experiences and successes working as part of a project organization with teams that deliver value to multiple stakeholders. Beginning that learning process as college juniors provides a competitive advantage that employers recognize in our students. Students constantly see the importance of grounding their behavior in sound theories that they can apply in the real world to inform their decisions and to propel their actions. Working to deliver services to a community markedly enhances the perspectives that our students bring to their careers after graduation.” – Randy Sleeth

INTL 341/RELS 340: Global Ethics and World Religions

Taught by Jennifer Garvin-Sanchez and Cindy Kissel-Ito

Imagine spending the morning volunteering alongside your Hispanic immigrant neighbors at a local urban creek clean-up project, then enjoying the afternoon playing soccer and talking with international students on the VCU campus. These class activities occur each semester as part of VCU’s Global Ethics and World Religions service-learning classes. Students in these classes analyze ethical issues that are impacted by globalization and begin to conceptualize what it means to be a global citizen. They engage in ecologically-focused community service projects such as working in urban youth gardening projects and serving as conversation partners with VCU international students.

VCU service-learning students, spring 2009
“I’ve become friends with many of the international students because of service-learning.”

“I was able to experience, first-hand, how my impact on the community helped the environment as well.”

VCU instructor
“Service-learning and Global Ethics has always been a natural fit. While ethics is an academic subject and students explore ethical reasoning in the course, service-learning helps students integrate ethical problems and ethical problem solving into their own lives by learning firsthand what people in the community are already doing to solve the problems in our community. By plugging into these efforts, students become part of the solution, one service-learning hour at a time.” – Jennifer Garvin-Sanchez