WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1999

Students help community

By Nicole Martinez

On-Line Forty-Niner

Students in the California State University system have more opportunities to develop skills pertaining to their major while giving back to the community thanks to a new plan.

The Community Service-Learning Strategic Plan, which was originally adopted by the CSU in 1997 and was to be implemtned over five years, was created to help students learn skills relative to their major course content through community service experiences.

The five-year plan has two key objectives.

One objective is to involve CSU students in a community service learning experience before they graduate. The second objective is to offer an ongoing selection of community service-learning experiences.

Twenty-one CSU campuses now support the program and have chosen a faculty member or administrator to lead the community-service learning initiatives. These leaders are supported by the Community Service-Learning Coordinator in the Chancellor's Office.

"Service-learning may be the most significant innovation in higher education since the curricular reforms of the 60's," San Francisco State President Robert Corrigan stated in a report given to the Board of Trustees. "In fact, I believe that it will prove to be the higher education legacy of the 90's and that it will have a lifelong impact on our students- just as participation in the civil rights struggle did on an earlier generation."

Programs that involve community service have been implemented at Cal State Long Beach.

Classes such as Black Studies 499, directed studies, enables students to help create a needs assessment for a neighborhood agency.

Another program at CSULB places future teachers in Long Beach's public school classrooms where they interact with students.

CSULB hopes students will become more involved in the community, especially those who do not normally volunteer, university officials said.

Through the plan, students will not only have mastery of subject matter, but will also have an understanding of their civic role in applying that knowledge to the challenges society faces, CSU officials said.

According to a Needs and Priorities Survey conducted five years ago, 49 percent of CSU students spent a total of 28 million hours a year doing community service.