 "Photo: Special to The Prospector")
Kathleen Staudt, Ph.D. Guest Columnist
El Paso's 700,000 residents live in a community with strengths and assets. It is a great place to live and work, but it is also a community that is building its economic and civic capacity to address many needs, such as poverty, limited education and low wages. When students and faculty members engage in capacity building in their own community, they are investing in progressive changes for themselves and their families. For a decade now, UTEP students and faculty have participated in community-based teaching, learning and research.
Students who participate through the Center for Civic Engagement earn partial course credit in a variety of social science, business, education, health and humanities courses. Working with their instructors, local schools and nonprofits, students complete part of their course requirements with experiences of structured service-learning projects aimed at empowering El Pasoans.
Through the CCE's various partner organizations, UTEP students have tutored adults in citizenship and ESL classes, read to children in elementary schools, conducted systemic observations in courtrooms and made presentations about pathways to college, civic participation, interpersonal violence and financial literacy.
Some faculty members and students take engaged learning up a notch in unique partnerships that involve community-based research and work with specific community partners. They conduct grant searches, develop brochures and marketing designs, construct Web sites, administer surveys and analyze survey results.
As a student, you may ask yourself why you should volunteer your time and be civically involved. I'll give you three really good reasons to engage yourself in the community.
First, civic engagement provides students with opportunities to apply their classroom learning into hands-on experience. Working in real-life situations helps to develop your skills, including people skills. I have heard many students say they identify new areas of interests, assets and strengths within themselves after their service-learning experiences.
Second, there are health benefits to giving your time freely. According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, those who volunteer their time and engage in the community have lower mortality rates, greater functional ability and lower rates of depression later in life than those who do not volunteer.
Finally, becoming civically involved and having practical experience prepares students for work and advanced learning beyond graduation. Students obtain certificates for their participation, have more to add to their résumés and will soon acquire parallel transcripts that document their active experiences in service learning and student activities. Students have said they chose their major or career niche through service learning.
Also, don't discount the ability to give back to a community that has invested in you. Your personal growth and your sense of humanity changes and transforms who you are and will be as a working adult.
With a motto of engaging faculty and students in the community through community-based approaches in order to enhance student learning, the CCE promotes civic engagement and actively improves the El Paso-Cd. Juárez region through a variety of programs.
I invite any student who may have an interest in becoming more involved with the community, be it through music, politics, social justice work, or youth development, to come by our office to see what we can offer you.
Editor's note: Dr. Kathy Staudt is a professor in the political science department and director of the Center for Civic Engagement. The CCE is located in Benedict Hall, Room 103. For more information, visit www.utep.edu/cce.
Kathy Staudt may be reached at kstaudt@utep.edu.
Be the first to comment on this article!