Samford students gain community awareness in service learning

Jeanice slid the calculator under the table and began to giggle.  
   
“What’s so funny?” asked Molly Michaud, a freshman at Samford University, suppressing a smile as she caught sight of the concealed number cruncher in the fourth grader’s clasped hands.
   
“Nothing,” Jeanice replied innocently, turning back to the 20th problem of her math homework. “The answer to this one is three, right?”
   
Michaud grinned. 
   
“Yes, you’re right.  And I see what you’re hiding,” she said. “Jeanice, you don’t need a calculator to do your math problems. Let’s use these crayons to count out the numbers.”
   
Jeanice has more than a box of crayons to help her learn the fundamentals of addition and subtraction. She’s got Michaud, encouraging and supporting her to finish her homework and do well in school.
   
As a student tutor at the Resident Council of Southtown Inc. in Birmingham, Michaud spends her Thursday afternoons with the elementary-school children who reside in the city’s downtown community. 
   
A homework helper and a friend, she is completing the service-learning component of her Communication Arts 101 class at Samford.
   
While many Samford students serve the Birmingham community, the service-learning requirement of UCCA 101 is an integral part of the university’s core curriculum.
   
The program combines philanthropic efforts with academic pursuits so students can learn from the communities they serve.  
   
Lynette Sandley, director of service learning and coordinator of communication arts, said the service-learning component involves 80–85 percent of freshmen, and approximately 600 students participate each year.
   
“It is a common first-year experience that gets students into the Birmingham community,” Sandley said. “It engages them in large societal issues, such as homelessness, illiteracy or care for the terminally ill, and then requires them to process and conceptualize their experiences within written and oral assignments.”
   
One of approximately 30 schools and service organizations partnered with Samford last fall, the Resident Council of Southtown Inc. is a low-income community operated by the Housing Authority of the Birmingham District. Made up of 451 housing units, the neighborhood initiated a tutoring program for its children three years ago. 
   
Classics professor Doug Clapp began tutoring at Southtown with his church and introduced Samford students to the organization last year. 
   
“Our students need to learn to operate in a real world full of all sorts of folks, so driving over the mountain to Southtown can show students that, in fact, some people don’t live with the assumptions common in the Samford community,” Clapp said. 
   
“A lot of life exists that is neither behind Samford’s gates nor in students’ hometowns. Hiding in those places limits the potential of students to examine how they can best live the life opening up before them.”
   
Clapp also says a commitment to service upholds Samford’s mission statement, “We nurture persons — for God, for learning, forever.” 
   
Clapp said, “One doesn’t have to read the Scriptures or examine church traditions long to find a call to service. If our students claim the Christian mission without claiming a call to service, then they are headlong into the development of a crippled faith.”
   
It also promotes a reciprocal fellowship between Samford students and the surrounding community, according to Dana Basinger, director of freshman life. Basinger refers to service learning as “field research.”
   
“Samford students observe the Southtown children closely and get to know them on a very personal level, hearing their stories and beginning to understand their lives. I like to think we do the same for the kids,” she said.
   
The service-learning component of UCCA 101 was initiated five years ago to link academics to community needs. 
   
Sandley said the brief exposure to issues in the Birmingham community is an attempt to promote a lifetime of service that will continue after students graduate.
   
While Michaud will research poverty, education and other social issues associated with Southtown for her written and oral assignments, she said her understanding of inner-city lifestyles has been truly enhanced by her tutoring experience. 
   
As the children’s voices in the gymnasium began to dwindle, Michaud picked up the pieces of the memory game. 
   
After homework and an educational activity, she and Jeanice had spent the last moments of their time together just having fun.
   
“She beat me this time,” Michaud said. “She had one more matched pair than I did. Next week we’ll play again.”