sealPurdue News
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May 15, 2003

Story idea for Chicago Tribune:

Thank you for considering covering our service-learning efforts at Purdue. The national conference here will be Monday through Wednesday (May 19-21). Ten universities will be represented, including several in your readership area, such as the University of Illinois, Notre Dame, Wisconsin-Madison.

Here's the concept: Service learning is sweeping the country. It's far more than college kids doing volunteer work. It's colleges and universities investing their academic muscle into turning out a new breed of college graduates: Those who know how to analyze a community's needs and develop programs to solve problems

The service-learning concept, already a national phenomenon, also has just captured the imagination of the National Science Foundation, which this month announced it is giving Purdue $2.5 million to continue growing the program nationally.

Related release:
https://www.purdue.edu/uns/uns/html3month/030430.Oakes.nsfgrant.html

The grant, as well as the conference, are potential news pegs for a national trend story. If you or anyone else might be able to attend the conference, it also would be great one-stop shopping for interviews. (We're only two hours away, even closer than Champaign!)

Here's how service-learning works: The universities establish courses that focus on teaching the students service-learning. The students then talk to community groups and identify how they might work as a team to help. Some examples:

• Most recently, under the leadership of Purdue, several have teamed together in a national effort to help Habitat for Humanity. One of the first projects is to develop multimedia training tools to help show volunteers the how-tos of building a house.

Earlier releases:
https://www.purdue.edu/uns/uns/html4ever/020221.Oakes.EPICS.html

https://www.purdue.edu/uns/uns/html3month/030115.Oakes.EPICSaward.html

• Students in a landscaping course at Purdue have plans to revitalize Chicago's Central Michigan Avenue, a two-mile stretch of the city's most prime real estate that has been a victim of urban decay over the past two decades. Course instructor Kim Wilson has added a slight twist to the project. Student teams were asked to incorporate a Segway personal transport system into their project design.

Earlier release:
https://www.purdue.edu/uns/uns/html4ever/021213.Wilson.segway.html

• Early on, one group learned that the community service agencies were having a hard time tracking homeless people as they went from agency to agency. The students responded by creating a computerized tracking system.

Earlier release:
https://www.purdue.edu/uns/uns/html4ever/961122.Jamieson.EPICS.htm

Our president, Martin C. Jischke, is very dedicated to this concept. I mentioned on the phone, his commencement address is on that very theme. I’ll send a copy of it to you under a separate e-mail tomorrow.