Purdue News
Purdue News
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March 27, 1998
Survey seeks to identify volunteers in Purdue communityWEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Purdue University students, staff and faculty are being asked to respond to surveys about service-learning courses and community service.The campuswide survey is being conducted by Purdue's representative for the Indiana Campus Compact and the ad hoc Task Force on Citizenship Education. The Indiana Campus Compact is a consortium of colleges, both public and private, seeking to cultivate in students a lifelong commitment to community service. "The inventory will help the university improve service-learning curricula, give community-service organizations a university connection for their projects, and help the university identify its many contributions to the community," said Richard Grace, director of the Undergraduate Studies Program and Purdue's representative for the Indiana Campus Compact. Service-learning courses are those in which the students do a community-service activity and then reflect in the classroom to gain further understanding of the course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility. Surveys have been sent to all 2,400 faculty members and 6,000 staff members on the West Lafayette campus, plus 4,500 students -- approximately 10 percent of the student body. Six hundred surveys also have been sent to recognized campus organizations. The surveys seek data on community-service activities, service learning, volunteerism and philanthropy by the Purdue community. Those who have not received a survey or who would prefer to respond on line can fill out a form on the Web at http://www3.mgmt.purdue.edu/citizen_ed. They should enter the user ID "service." According to Grace, "Service learning has long been a tradition at Purdue, but no one has attempted to determine its scope." For example, nursing students instruct aviation technology students on first aid, pharmacy students make house calls on the elderly to make sure they're taking their medicine correctly, and the award-winning EPICS Program, "Engineering Programs in Community Service," matches faculty and students with local nonprofit agencies needing technical assistance. In the latest service-learning partnership, students from the School of Computer and Electrical Engineering and students from a sociology course are developing a prototype system for tracking homeless clients for the Indianapolis office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. EPICS Program co-director Ed Coyle said: "We provide the technical expertise and resources these agencies wouldn't be able to afford on their own. At the same time, the program helps undergraduate students become more marketable as they participate in real projects with real customers." CONTACT: Richard Grace, (765) 494-0843; e-mail: regrace@usp.purdue.edu
Writer: Jeanine Smith, (765) 496-3133; e-mail: jeanine_smith@purdue.edu
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