Service Learning

Service Learning Activities

Stockton's Gerontology Program began implementing Service Learning opportunities in our courses as early as 1997 when we received a grant via the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education and the University of Pittsburgh from the Corporation for National and Community Service to infuse intergenerational service learning into the GERO curriculum. In that grant we developed seven service projects drawing students from five GERO course.  Click Here for a compendium of brief reports from the ten universities involved in the first year of that grant. More recently, several of our courses involve service activities in the community, longterm care facilities, and community organizations.  Below are two examples of service activities SCOSA has supported.

Freshman Writing Seminar Promotional Flyers

SCOSA director Dave Burdick and Stockton retirees Barbara Reynolds (Free-To-Be) and Gene Cranmer (Computer & Telecommunications Services) met with a freshman writing class to view and evaluate a writing assignment, which involved learning about SCOSA and then creating promotional flyers that could be used to promote SCOSA activities to retirees.

The assignment was envisioned by associate professor of first year studies and writing Heather McGovern as a way to make the assignment real, thereby raising the bar and fostering civic engagement. Students' assignments were creative and thought-provoking, each with its own unique twist. McGovern later thanked the guests, writing: "Thank you for taking some of your valuable time to help them learn. Some have received mostly negative messages about their writing ability. Knowing that I trust them to produce work for real people outside the classroom, and to have you participate in treating them with respect and valuing their work--and helping to educate them--makes a difference."

 

SCOSA's Intergenerational Service Project - Sharing Across Generations