(Page 20 of 20) - Advancing Undergraduate Service Learning and Community-Based Research at a Large Public Research University: The University of Wisconsin-Madison Morgridge Center for Public Service authored by Rouse, Mary. and Sapiro, Virginia.

The Morgridge Center, and its goal of further integrating service- learning and

community-based research into the curriculum is about to enter a new phase. Its second
director serving from 1999-2005 (and the first author of this paper) will be retiring at the
end of this academic year. Extensive discussions inside the Center and with its partners at
the Wisconsin Union and with the Office of the Provost converged on the idea that the
next phase in this project would be enhanced by transforming the directorship into a part-
time faculty position rather than a full-time academic staff position. This will require
reorganization and the addition of some personnel. Our shared view, however, is that
although we have gone a long way toward developing partnerships with schools and
colleges and campus administrative offices, encouraging faculty to participate in these
programs, and develop new courses, having a director who is a senior faculty member
will help knit those connections more tightly and closely, and add more expertise in the
details of curriculum development, faculty career issues, and other challenges that will
need to be handled as we move forward.

It is important to note, in conclusion, that the Morgridge Center is only one of many

such university-based centers for public service established on campuses across the
country. Many of our programs and ideas have borrowed heavily from the creative ideas
and programs in place on those campuses. We are connected with them in many ways,
including through participation in the Campus Compact on the national level and the
Wisconsin Campus Compact on the state level. It is also true that while we highlight the
specific issues facing a campus like the University of Wisconsin – Madison, we do not
mean to downplay the commonalities across different kinds of colleges and universities.
Our point, rather, has been to suggest a means of assessment of the roles such
administrative centers play in the support and encouragement of service- learning and
community-based research on their campuses. The particularities of the opportunities and
roadblocks, and thus of the most likely solutions, vary to some degree across different
kinds of campuses, just as we find differences across the specific schools and colleges of
this one university. This outline of institutional support needs, and the ways the centers
address those needs, together with sharing our results across universities and colleges,
should be helpful in pursuing this important work further.

References

Bringle, Robert & Julie Hatcher. 1995. “A Service-Learning Curriculum for Faculty”
The Michigan Journal of Community Service-Learning 2: 112-122.