The Community Based Learning Initiative, led by the Center for Social Concern (CSC), has finalized plans to begin offering community serviced-based courses for academic credit.
Though leaders of the Initiative have not yet set specific course descriptions or a time frame for the project, they say each course will incorporate community service and Baltimore-based learning.
"This experiential learning enriches the academic portion of the course. In this way, Hopkins students not only gain intellectually and implement textbook theory in real-life situations, but they also become more socially aware and develop a better understanding of the community in which they live," Tiffany Chen, a senior involved in developing the Initiative, said.
According to members of the CSC, there is student demand for these types of courses at Homewood.
"I consider the best classes I have taken at Hopkins to be the ones that have had applications to meet community needs. I feel like we are given this opportunity to be in college in order to give back to society," senior Jerome Brown said.
The idea for community-based learning first surfaced in spring of 2007 when the CSC's Student Advocacy Board began discussing service-learning courses.
With the goal of coupling academics with community involvement, several students set out to research service learning at other institutions.
Sarah Valverde, a senior political science major, was one of the students involved in the research process. Valverde said the Board began by contacting peer institutions such as Princeton, Loyola and Yale, and finding out how they instated community based learning programs on their campuses.
The students decided that they wanted Hopkins to offer three to five community-based learning courses, and they began writing proposals for formal review.
The proposals were reviewed by several committees, Dean Paula Burger and the Student Government Association. After a positive reception, the CSC decided to hire an AmeriCorps VISTA, Lisa Morris, to help implement the program.
"There are so many things going on around campus - there are so many issues and problems in Baltimore. Then there is Hopkins, which can serve as a huge resource to help solve these problems. This is one way that we can connect the campus and the community and provide a benefit to both," Morris said.
Currently the founders of this initiative are looking to provide support for faculty and students looking to create and run community-based learning courses.
Morris explained that the next big step will be to create a community-based learning working group to work out the details of the program.
"The plan is to create a program that will connect faculty and students with community service organizations in order to foster academics as well as fill a community need," she said.
"We want to meet some real social needs here in Baltimore. It is a win-win situation because the student gets experience and the community gets aid," Morris said.
Hopkins already offers a few courses with community service components. The French Teaching Internship offers students the chance to help teach fourth and fifth graders at a local elementary school, Practicum in Community Health Care allows students to participate in health service intervention programs, and the Student Outreach Resource Center, at Hopkins's East Baltimore campuses, provides support for community outreach and service-learning opportunities at the schools of Medicine, Nursing and Public Health.
"We are hoping to build upon things we already have here at Hopkins - Practicums, community service organizations and partnerships," Morris said.
According to Brown, this Initiative, if successful, will let students make changes in Baltimore in a way that benefits their education, rather than distracting from it.
"Personally, I think we are at a point where we can step into history. These are the kinds of classes that will allow us to do that," Brown said.
