This interdisciplinary course is a real-world collaborative multi-year project that connects various departments, courses, and independent study projects on a college campus. Using the client/consultant model, students from several departments and a wide range of environmental backgrounds come together to explore the design of an efficient future student house on campus. Over a couple of years, students research and test building designs, energy for heating and power, natural flows of available energy, natural ecosystem processes including living machines, and possible materials to use in the eventual construction of the eco-house. This SERC Starting Point site includes learning goals, context for use, teaching tips and materials, assessment, and references.

In this service-learning engineering project, students follow the steps of the engineering design process to design an assistive eating device for a client. More specifically, they design a prototype device to help a young girl who has a medical condition that restricts the motion of her joints. Her wish is to eat her favorite food, pizza, without getting her nose wet. Students learn about arthrogryposis and how it affects the human body as they act as engineers to find a solution to this open-ended design challenge and build a working prototype. This project works even better if you arrange for a client in your own community.

This semester-long project on conducting an environmental audit of a college campus can be done by an individual or by groups of students working in teams. Each group will research a different aspect of campus operations; they will collect data, analyze their findings, and make recommendations for improvements. This SERC Starting Point site includes learning goals, context for use, teaching tips and materials, assessment, and references.

The Environment and the Earth class at the University of South Carolina participated in a campus environmental service-learning project where students collected data lighting, water fixtures, recycling bins, and trash in five academic buildings.

Are you interested in investigating how nature engineers itself? How engineers copy the shapes found in nature ("biomimetics")? This Freshman Seminar investigates why similar shapes occur in so many natural things and how physics changes the shape of nature. Why are things in nature shaped the way they are? How do birds fly? Why do bird nests look the way they do? How do woodpeckers peck? Why can't trees grow taller than they are? Why is grass skinny and hollow? What is the wood science behind musical instruments? Questions such as these are the subject of biomimetic research and they have been the focus of investigation in this course for the past three years.

Students study aquatic organisms in relation to the environmental conditions of lakes and streams. The course develops substantial quantities of data concerning the local watershed. This data is used by community partners in many contexts.

In this service learning project, college students work in groups of three to prepare a 55-minute interactive lesson on one of the topics listed on the syllabus and team teach the lesson to students at a local high school.

This course is an introduction to the aspects of marine geology and oceanography that affect the environment and marine resources. Service-learning is an essential component of how students learn about the earth. We deliver part of the content of this course by arranging for students to solve a problem with a local community partner.

Make the Lead4Change Student Leadership Program the best new idea for your school this year!  Leadership + Service = Measurable Change.  FREE lessons and amazing outcomes. Students lead, lives are changed.  Get started today with ready-to-use lessons, resources and more at Lead4Change.orgTry Lesson One now!  To access the rest, register at www.lead4change.org/join.    In the meantime, check out the 1-minute video  What is Lead4Change?

The Sarita Wetland restoration on the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus is used as teaching tools by numerous classes. Students, staff and faculty have collaborated on the planning and implementation of the project. This example highlights the restoration process, and specifically references one of the classes, the Water Quality class.

This unit describes a general approach to guiding students to complete service-based engineering design projects, with specific examples provided in detail as associated activities. With your class, brainstorm ideas for engineering designs that benefit your community or a specific person in your community. Then, guided by the steps of the engineering design process, have students research to understand background science and math, meet their client to understand the problem, and create, test and improve prototype devices. Note that service-based projects often take more time to prepare, especially if you arrange for a real client. However, the authors notice that students of both genders and all ethnicities tend to respond with more enthusiasm and interest to altruistic projects.

This website contains several ideas for service learning projects for many different disciplines and areas of study.

Service Learning is a requirement at Middleton High School. The teachers are encouraged to provide Service Learning opportunities for students in our class [embeded in our curriculum].  The students must have 40 hours to graduate.  In our FCS department, we help meet the need for students to earn 10 of their hours in one of our foods classes [Introduction to Culinary Arts 1 and Global Foods].   Here is a report information sheet and rubric for your to use.    

Students will produce a report for a local non-profit organization in which they will evaluate the effectiveness of vocational training in improving the labor market opportunities for non-college bound youths. The report will be used by the organization when applying for grants.

College students in an intermediate micro-economic theory class teach economic concepts to elementary school students.

The course was a senior-level 3 credit seminar designed primarily for junior and senior economics majors and minors. This capstone-type course offered an opportunity for 18 students to learn about urban economics as it applies to local economic development while being actively involved in the actual practice of community and economic development through a partnership with Burlington's innovative Community and Economic Development Office (CEDO). Specifically, Students conducted the following activities for CEDO's economic development division: 1. Collected data to enable an up-to-date understanding of economic/demographic trends and conditions in Burlington and the region. CEDO has previously hired outside consultants to periodically produce a data rich document titled "Jobs and People." My students put together "Jobs and People IV." Key contributions unique to J&P IV were the construction of time series based on NAICS instead of SIC industry codes and the addition of variables to reflect Burlington's movement away from manufacturing to an economy based more on the arts, technology and sustainable agriculture. This report is now used throughout the state of Vermont. 2. Developed a dataset in excel with formulas and sources that makes it easy for CEDO staff to keep "Jobs and People" continuously updated and to modify the data and charts to meet their changing needs. CEDO will now need to rely less on expensive outside consultants. Students conducted the following activities for CEDO's community development division: 1. Conducted a survey of Burlington residents on their quality of life in the historical but economically challenged Old North End neighborhood. The survey was also designed to gather information about the types of supports residents want and to identify the role played by CEDO sponsored neighborhood associations in resident perceptions of quality of life.

The Tippy Tap hand-washing station is an inexpensive and effective device used extensively in the developing world. One shortcoming of the homemade device is that it must be manually refilled with water and therefore is of limited use in high-traffic areas. In this activity, student teams design, prototype and test piping systems to transport water from a storage tank to an existing Tippy Tap hand-washing station, thereby creating a more efficient hand-washing station. Through this example service-learning engineering project, students learn basic fluid dynamic principles that are needed for creating efficient piping systems.

Students volunteer at any one of a variety of community agencies that serve low-income populations to better understand the underlying issues of poverty and income distribution in their community.

This service-learning impact analysis project had students look in detail at the current employment and purchasing practices and policies of the University of Vermont. Unlike traditional impact analyses that attempt to calculate the total impact of an institution on the local economy, this project attempted to identify where the University could change policies and practices to increase positive local impacts both from an efficiency and equity perspective. Students worked with a 14-person advisory committee from the University, local and state government and local non-profits.

In this service-learning engineering project, students follow the steps of the engineering design process to design a hearing testing device. More specifically, they design a prototype machine that can be used to test the peripheral vision of partially-blind, pre-verbal children. Students learn about the basics of vision and vision loss. They also learn how a peripheral vision tester for adults works (by testing the static peripheral vision in the four quadrants of the visual field with four controllable lights in specific locations). Then they modify the idea of the adult peripheral vision tester to make it usable for testing young children. The class designs and builds one complete prototype, working in sub-groups of four or five students each to build sub-components of the project design.