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| navigate: home: magazine: fall 2002: article | |
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Incoming students gather in Philadelphia for orientation through community service By Celena E. Kusch | ||||||
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This summer, 18 new Penn State students started their college orientation not by taking a college tour, but by digging into the Philadelphia community with community service projects. Students in the new Urban Service Adventures (USA) program had an opportunity to learn more about urban Philadelphia, while making friendships that will ease the transition from home to college. “The goal was ultimately to create friendships and to establish connections through an intense bonding experience centered around civic engagement,” said Susanne Dubrouillet, program director for teambuilding and incoming student orientation programs (ORION and USA) at the Penn State Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center. “If we can inspire students to make some decisions that will have an impact on society, those decisions may carry through their course-planning and college careers.” According to Dr. Arthur Carter, assistant vice president of student affairs, research on first-year students shows that incoming students are extremely involved in volunteer work, and they are interested in maintaining their involvement while in college. “Many students come to Penn State even more service-minded than we as an institution are able to support,” Carter explained. “Most of our campuses are in small communities, so it is important to help students reach out to other communities. This benefits both our students and the communities they want to serve. The students like to contribute to their own communities and to see how their University experience can apply to their home neighborhoods.” The Urban Service Adventures program, held for the first time this year, was sponsored by the College of Health and Human Development and the Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center. During the USA program, students stayed at the Chamounix Hostel in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park and worked in two groups on projects in the Fairmount Park and the Cobb’s Creek Environmental Center in Philadelphia. Dubrouillet and Carter worked with Penn State Cooperative Extension agent Elmore Hunter to forge connections with Philadelphia community organizations. “We wanted to look at an urban setting where students would have the same bonding and identification with Penn State gained by the same group activities we facilitate in the Shaver’s Creek setting. We had a strong identification with Philadelphia, because of Penn State’s outreach center in the middle of downtown, and there was a great fit with Cobb’s Creek Environmental Center, because it’s a real community-led initiative,” Carter said. The Urban Service Adventures program was modeled after Penn State’s ORION program, a nationally recognized, award-winning, wilderness orientation program for incoming students. The ORION Wilderness Orientation Program integrates environmental education and appreciation with teambuilding activities and guidance for incoming students—especially students from underrepresented groups—who are enrolled at any Penn State campus. Research has shown that a personalized linkage to the institution has been universally identified as the key to positive retention outcomes for undergraduate students, but students who are members of racial and ethnic minority groups have consistently found it more difficult to establish such connections. The retention and graduation rates of African American and Hispanic/Latino American students at most public colleges and universities are significantly lower than for other groups. The USA program aims to give students the tools to establish these connections. “One of our goals was to have that group of students come to Penn State this fall with a strong feeling of identification with the institution, several long-term college friendships and a greater appreciation for the natural environment, especially in urban areas,” Carter added. The USA program combined teambuilding and community problem-solving activities with nightly discussions and assignments for a 2-credit course about community engagement. The experiential format of Urban Service Adventures fostered the integration of the peer and academic domains of college life. This year, students participated in workshops and lectures by the Greater Area Food Bank, Penn State Cooperative Extension’s Urban Gardening program and a Fairmount Park historian. Students also toured some of the city’s urban gardens, helped package food at the food bank and enjoyed an all-community cookout at the park. “This program benefited not only those students who were involved in the program, but also served the communities in which our program worked. Although we are only in Philadelphia for six days, the students made a permanent impact at Cobb’s Creek and Fairmount Park that will benefit the entire community. Through the involvement in community service, students learned about the communities from which they come, and we hope they will want to continue to contribute to the improvement of those communities,” Dubrouillet said. “We are planting a seed right at the onset of their college careers and helping them tailor their studies around the idea of giving back to their communities,” she added. According to Carter, the plans for this program are first to find ways to sustain this effort with University and community support and then to collaborate with the College of Health and Human Development and Penn State Cooperative Extension to expand the program to allow for greater urban-rural exchange. In addition to the community partners noted above, Urban Service Adventures involved faculty and staff from Penn State’s Recreation and Park Management program, Office of Student Affairs, Continuing Education, Penn State Cooperative Extension and the School of Information Sciences and Technology. Funding to support student housing and activities was provided by the Office of Student Affairs, Equal Opportunity Planning Committee and the Program Innovation Fund of the Division of Continuing Education. An outreach program of the College of Health and Human Development, Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center, Penn State Cooperative Extension, Recreation and Park Management, Office of Student Affairs, Penn State Continuing Education and School of Information Sciences and Technology | |||||
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© 2002 Outreach Communications, Outreach & Cooperative Extension, The Pennsylvania State University phone: (814) 865-8108, fax: (814) 863-2765, e-mail: outreachnews@outreach.psu.edu |
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