ERIC EJ1137477: Teach the Partnership: Critical University Studies and the Future of Service-Learning

2016·0.05 MB·English

by  ERIC

Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning Fall 2016, pp. 107–110
Teach the Partnership: Critical University Studies
and the future of Service- Learning
David J. fine
University of Dayton
Edward Zlotkowski’s (1995) article “Does stakeholders involved – and thereby contextualize
Service- Learning Have a Future?” challenges the SLCE within the often problematic forces at work
academy to integrate community-e ngaged learning within and upon higher education. I thus call on
into the curriculum. As Zlotkowski suggests, stu- the movement to interrogate, pedagogically, the
dents, staff, and faculty ought to engender a culture motivations behind institutional “commitments” to
of civic action and ethical accountability enhanced SLCE and to account, ethically, for the economic
by rigorous coursework, but this goal necessitates and social privilege animating this service.
resources: administrators must invest in service-
learning to reap its full benefits. Issues arise, how- Consider the Means
ever, when one considers this investment in light of
the academy’s corporatization. Nussbaum (2010) To look back on the past twenty years and for-
has noted, for instance, how colleges and universi- ward to the next is to acknowledge higher educa-
ties increasingly emphasize vocational training and tion’s rapid corporatization and internationaliza-
professional readiness at the expense of humanist tion. I recommend that SLCE educators engage
inquiry and civic responsibility. The academy’s with the academy’s globalization – the process
corporatization, she argues, threatens to erode the whereby higher education assumes a corporate
skills at the heart of democratic citizenship. Wil- mentality and expands its reach internationally – by
liams (2012) likewise censures this market- driven designing instruction in the vein of critical univer-
academy “with research progressively governed sity studies (CUS). CUS is an emerging field that
more by corporations that fund and benefit from it, examines higher education in light of its history
with faculty downsized and casualized, and with and cultural context. CUS analyzes both historical
students reconstituted as consumers subject to es- shifts in conceptions of the academy and contem-
calating tuition and record levels of debt” (p. 25). porary issues such as adjunct labor and student
He insists that students, staff, and faculty must en- debt, thereby “examining the university as both a
gage critically with these unsettling trends in high- discursive and material reality” (Williams, 2012,
er education – a n appeal, I argue, service-l earning para.10). CUS is interdisciplinary by nature and
educators in particular must heed. gives students the opportunity to analyze both high-
As higher education, deeply influenced by neo- er education and specific institutions through a lens
liberalism’s pressures to marketize, adopts the that is particularly relevant given the current trends
structure and value systems of big business, it risks toward corporatization and internationalization.
placing private interest before public concern. This Indeed, conversations about their school’s histo-
danger, even more acute twenty- one years after the ry, governance, and endowment position students,
publication of Zlotkowski’s article, underscores the staff, faculty, and, especially in the case of SLCE,
need for a reassessment of the institutional means community members to think about the ethical di-
by which service-l earning happens. “Perhaps,” Zlo- mensions of the academy’s presence and impact in
tkowski (2015) wonders in his framing essay for broader publics.
the Future Directions Project, “there is a fundamen- While this sort of dialogue may well happen in
tal mismatch at the heart of our work that we have SLCE classrooms around the world, the explic-
not wanted to recognize” (p. 84). Higher education it inclusion of CUS in SLCE programming aims
may not prove the best location, after all, from to make these conversations more intentional and
which to effect progressive democratic change. In concrete. Through guided reflection on experienc-
what follows, I stay the course with this provoca- es in and with communities, facilitators prompt
tion and argue that service- learning and communi- critical conversation about the deep interconnec-
ty engagement (SLCE) educators must teach their tion between the institution and its community,
partnerships – t he specific histories, missions, and emphasizing their shared history, economy, and
107
Fine
space. Such dialogue accepts Williams’ (2007) in- of how my colleagues and I integrated CUS into an
vitation to “teach the university” (p. 25); according SLCE activity. During a January 2015 intersession
to Williams, careful examination of higher educa- trip to Cambodia – as part of Lehigh University’s
tion “gives students a language to articulate some Global Citizenship (GC) Program – Professor So-
of the stakes in current policies and practices, to thy Eng, Graduate Assistant Whitney Szmodis, and
define its cultural images, and to discern steps in its I designed, in close collaboration with long- term
evolution” (p. 32). Students then bring this knowl- community partners, a layered SLCE experience
edge of higher education’s history to bear on their to provoke reflection on global service-l earning in
own institution. At its best, a teach-t he- university general and on Lehigh’s partnership with Caring for
approach “sets out terms upon which to judge and Cambodia (CFC) in particular. Lehigh University’s
assess particular incarnations of the university” (p. College of Education has worked closely with CFC,
32). Within a CUS framework, SLCE educators not an NGo dedicated to improving children’s educa-
only approach colleges and universities as histori- tion, for many years. Professor Eng’s graduate stu-
cal institutions – i nstitutions that both shape and are dents visit CFC schools twice each academic year,
shaped by the larger sweep of social and cultural and during the summer he directs a CFC-c entered
forces – but also conceptualize SLCE as a distinct internship program for undergraduate and graduate
manifestation within that history. SLCE does not students. Lehigh’s seasoned partnership with CFC
emerge in a vacuum. It participates in the adapta- provided the Global Citizenship Program with the
tion and reinvention of institutions and is caught up opportunity to structure a multifaceted experience
in their missions, strategic plans, and promotional at CFC schools. Its aim was both to provoke critical
branding. CUS articulates these tensions and brings reflection on global citizenship in theory and prac-
them to the table for ethical consideration. tice and to provide valuable feedback to CFC on its
Recognition of the academy as an evolving prod- attempts to strengthen volunteer programming as a
uct of specific societal pressures is especially press- means of promoting local Cambodians’ agency.
ing as institutions globalize. Global engagement is, During the intersession trip to Cambodia, GC
often enough, indicative of the profit-d riven educa- students visited NGos, attended court at the Khmer
tion that Keenan, SJ, decries (2015). For example, Rouge Tribunal, toured historical monuments, and
he cites how universities depend on the high tuition dialogued with local university students. In ad-
payments of international students to meet their vance of a half- day session at CFC, my colleagues
budgets but fail to provide the support these stu- and I divided the twenty-t hree participating GC
dents’ academic and social flourishing requires. For sophomores into three teams. Each group visited a
reasons like these, Williams (2012) urges suspicion different CFC school and performed a distinct type
of “the globalization of higher education, which is of service. The first team – w hich included various
promoted as altruistic but is often actually a profit- student leaders on Lehigh’s campus – undertook
seeking endeavor through which American or Eu- traditional volunteer work. They painted stools and
ropean universities sell their brands and services” assembled hygiene packets. They did not collabo-
(para. 21). As institutions progressively incorporate rate with CFC students, staff, or faculty directly; in
the language of global citizenship into their mission this sense, the unglamorous labor was practical but
statements, they articulate a fundamental ambiva- isolated. The second group – c omposed of bilingual
lence. A tension exists between the call for moral students and English- language learners – o bserved
reflection on human interconnection, on the one an English class. The GC students met with the in-
hand, and the promotion of economic globalization, structor after class and shared their own experienc-
on the other. This strain, of course, is not unfamil- es learning English. Here, they reflected with the
iar to SLCE practitioners. It appears as well in local instructor on what they had seen and heard during
settings, where SLCE activities can, as Zlotkowski the class and offered feedback from their own per-
(1995) warns, repackage a “missionary mentality” spectives. The third team interacted with Cambodi-
(p.130). To avoid positioning SLCE as a means of an high school students. The high schoolers showed
“saving” others and to acknowledge both profes- the GC students some traditional gardening meth-
sional and geographical privilege, SLCE educators ods and invited them to assist in planting a small
must wrestle with the moral and political questions garden patch. This interaction provided the Cam-
about the globalizing academy that CUS raises. bodian students with a chance to practice spoken
English and to share their cultural knowledge. Sig-
Think the Process nificantly, it prioritized local knowledge and put the
GC visitors in the position of learners.
What might it look like to engage such questions By design, the GC students did not become
as part of SLCE? At this juncture, I share an example aware of the differences among their experiences
108
Teach the Partnership
until later in the day. We invited the CFC curricu- nerships and future SLCE initiatives at CFC. These
lum director to join our nightly reflection, and she discussions continued in the Literature and Global
asked the GC students questions relevant to CFC’s Justice course that followed the two- week interses-
programming for international volunteers. As they sion trip. The GC students’ experiences at CFC en-
wrestled with these questions, the students real- riched their critical approach to literature and social
ized they had engaged in very different activities justice as it grounded theoretical considerations in
during the day. Through dialogue that drew on dis- living partnerships and personal connections. In
tinct forms of service, they began to articulate the this way, our study of texts about colonial Indochi-
larger stakes of their dissimilar experiences, posing na and from contemporary Southeast Asia – such as
questions of privilege and equity. They wondered Graham Greene’s The Quiet American and Vaddey
if their visit interfered with the school day. They Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan – remained in
asked how long one must stay in order to make dialogue with the priorities of our home institution
a positive contribution to the community. They and the privilege lurking within abstract concepts
probed the white- savior complex and problema- like global citizenship. In their reflective writing
tized the good feelings obtained through one-a nd- and in classroom conversation, students situated
done service. Along the way, they thought carefully their GC education in the concrete partnerships and
about their university’s relationship with the East, privileges that made it possible in the first place.
for each approach to service imagined a distinct
relationship between Western travelers and native Evaluate the Ends
Cambodians. The visit’s design allowed for differ-
ences in perspective among students, teachers, and This experience illuminates what I believe CUS
partners to emerge organically, and these disparities offers to SLCE. While a CUS approach to SLCE re-
invited GC students to come to their own individu- inforces SLCE’s commitment to ongoing relation-
al conclusions regarding service-l earning and their ships, active reflection, and reciprocal exchange,
university’s global engagement. it also underscores three benefits of teaching the
This activity thus foregrounded Lehigh’s part- partnership:
nership with CFC as itself an object of study and
(a) A CUS approach grounds SLCE in the in-
critique. It highlighted the partnership’s evolution
stitutions that simultaneously support and
over time as it demonstrated how the partnership
thwart the movement’s fruition. SLCE en-
continues to develop through negotiation with local
hanced with a CUS framing sits with ambi-
and international partners. While it might seem like
guity and interrogates its own compromises,
some students participated in the “better” service
without sanitizing, idealizing, or infantiliz-
– perhaps the one that prioritized Cambodian stu-
ing community members;
dents’ knowledge – conversation highlighted bene-
fits and costs to all three experiences. That particular (b) CUS does not present higher education as
morning, CFC needed stools painted and hygiene an uncomplicated fount of truth from which
packets assembled. GC students in the first group good things inevitably flow, and it thus com-
were able to accomplish concrete tasks, freeing up plicates SLCE educators’ positions by defin-
CFC staff for other work. They responded, in short, ing them as embroiled in and sometimes in
to a need articulated by the partner. In contrast, a tension with systems larger than their indi-
lot of thought and planning on behalf of CFC staff vidual research, teaching, and service (how-
members went into organizing the other two expe- ever progressive). Such candid recognition
riences, time that might have been better spent on communicates to students the need for con-
Cambodian – r ather than GC – s tudents. Further, tinued moral vigilance inside and outside the
as one GC student pointed out, CFC’s engagement academy; and
with GC students had larger consequences for its (c) Finally, this method involves students direct-
own branding, since CFC wants to communicate to ly in SLCE’s thorny processes and thereby
its volunteers and donors the importance it places stimulates both critical reflection and judg-
on native voice and experience. Points like these ment. It nudges learners beyond personal
confronted students with SLCE’s moral murkiness opinion to critical reflection and democratic
and entangled them in its thicket. interaction with peers, partners, and profes-
Clearly, our visit to CFC was far too short for a sionals as the learning community imagines
high- quality service experience. The visit sought, situations from various perspectives and,
instead, to engage GC students and community given this diversity of viewpoints, judges a
partners in a critical conversation about possible particular initiative’s efficacy.
– and competing – models for international part-
109
Fine
In other words, CUS strategically implicates both comments. My most sincere gratitude belongs,
individuals and communities in the moral muddle however, to Whitney Szmodis, who first theorized
that is SLCE’s relation to the global, corporate and subsequently orchestrated GC’s visit to CFC.
academy. This piece, while expressing my personal views
Analysis of a specific institution’s history, gov- on higher education and SLCE, has benefitted by
ernance, and outreach builds a solid, ethical foun- Whitney’s commitment to ethical and passionate
dation for SLCE initiatives moving forward. As we engagement with others.
move in this direction, students might shift from
being the recipients of prepackaged SLCE experi- References
ences – w herein, as Zlotkowski (1995) notes, “re-
flection too often amounts to little more than stu- Keenan, J. F. (2015). University ethics: How colleges
dent ‘discovery’ of a pre- determined, ideologically can build and benefit from a culture of ethics. Lanham,
‘correct’ interpretation of the service experience” MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
(p. 125) – to co- creators, who plan, implement, and Nussbaum, M. C. (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy
evaluate initiatives in collaboration with campus needs the humanities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
facilitators and community partners. Thus, stu- versity Press.
dents – indeed all participants – might engage with Williams, J. J. (2007). Teach the university. Pedagogy:
SLCE’s ethical complications rather than assum- Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language,
Composition, and Culture, 8(1), 25– 42.
ing, in advance, that all SLCE efforts are inherently
good. For higher education’s globalization affects Williams, J. J. (2012, February 19). Deconstructing ac-
ademe: The birth of critical university studies. The
more than service- learning abroad: SLCE must
Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://
interrogate, with honesty and precision, the aca-
chronicle.com
demic structures and institutionalized benefits that
Zlotkowski, E. (1995). Does service- learning have a fu-
buttress its efforts. The mere appeal to prosocial,
ture? Michigan Journal of Community Service Learn-
civic virtues belies the privilege of students, staff,
ing, 2(1), 123– 133.
and faculty housed in the powerful, neoliberal insti-
Zlotkowski, E. (2015). Twenty years and counting: A
tutions of U.S. higher education. Resources, how-
framing essay. Michigan Journal of Community Ser-
ever necessary, are not innocent. I hence call for vice Learning, 22(1), 82– 85.
the SLCE movement to adopt a CUS approach, one
that critically assesses the academy’s past, present, Author
and future engagements.
DAVID J. FINE ([email protected]) is an as-
Note sistant professor of English with specialization in
literature, culture, and religion at the University of
I would like to thank the editors for their gener- Dayton. Formerly, he served as the assistant direc-
ous and helpful feedback on previous drafts. I am tor of Lehigh University’s Global Citizenship Pro-
especially grateful for Patti Clayton’s attention to gram. His research, teaching, and service explore
little words, because they make a big difference. I the interface of literature, ethics, and community
also wish to thank my dear friends, Jenna Lay and engagement.
Emily Shreve, who both read this essay and offered
110