International Service-Learning Research Conference

Posted by on September 12, 2011

SCHOLARS MEET IN CHICAGO TO ADVANCE SOCIAL CHANGE

For the past decade the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) has presented an annual conference devoted to the dissemination of best practices and research in the educational discipline of service-learning and community engagement.  Service-Learning and Community Engagement classes encourage colleges, universities and students to become more deeply engaged in the community, improves teaching and learning, and creates socially responsible knowledge benefiting all involved. Academics and practitioners committed to promoting research and discussion about service-learning and community engagement attend this conference from around the world to present their research in the field.

This year the organizing educational institutions include:  the Illinois Campus Compact, Columbia College Chicago, DePaul University, Loyola University, National Louis University and Northern Illinois University.

Research for Impact: Scholarship Advancing Social Change is the theme of the 11th Annual IARSLCE conference taking place November 2–4, 2011, at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago.  “This is the single most important conference on research for service learning and community engagement,” said conference co-chair, Howard Rosing, Ph.D., Executive Director, Irwin W. Steans Center for Community-Based Service Learning & Community Service Studies at DePaul University.

Service learning is valued as an important teaching and learning strategy around the globe. Service-Learning classes are distinguished from other approaches to learning by their intention to equally benefit the student and the non-profit community partner as well as to ensure equal focus on both the service being provided and the learning that is occurring.  While community engagement places students in activities that primarily focus on the service being provided to the non-profit community partner. In community engagement activities students learn how their service and expertise make a difference in the lives of the non-profit recipients.

The Conference Committee is please to announce the three keynote speakers for the 11th Annual IARSLCE Research Conference.

Professor Ceasar McDowell will speak on Designing for the Margins:  Service-Learning and Community Engagement as an Act of Liberation.  McDowell is a creative visionary leader who collaboratively designs and implements tools, techniques and programs that effectively support local knowledge development, collaboration, innovation and learning across differences. He is a professor of the Practice of Community Development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and he is the Director, Dropping Knowledge International.

McDowell’s keynote presentation will focus on the idea of Service-Learning and Community Engagement as an act of liberation for those least served in the world.  The talk sets a vision for the role of Service-Learning and Civic Engagement programs as essential component of a broader social change effort, one that places the knowledge and experiences of those least served at the center of inquiry, action and engagement. Through the talk he will demonstrate how new forms of communication and social networking media can enhance the ability of Service Learning and Civic Engagement programs to meet this challenge. The talk will draw heavily on examples from his work at Engage The Power, The Center for Reflective Community Practice at MIT and the Egan Urban Center, DePaul University.  Professor McDowell earned an Ed.D. at Harvard University, Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA Administration, Planning, Social Policy, and Research.

Laura I. Rendón, Professor of Higher Education in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Texas-San Antonio, will offer another major presentation. Her current research focuses on access, retention and graduation of low-income, first-generation college students and the transformation of teaching and learning to emphasize wholeness and social justice.

Professor Rendón conference presentation will focus on  “Contemplative Engagement to Advance Social Change.” Rendón is the author of Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) Pedagogy: Educating for Wholeness, Social Justice and Liberation. She is also is co-editor of Transforming the First Year of College for Students of Color, Educating a New Majority, and Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Higher Education ASHE Reader.  She has received numerous awards including the ASHE Distinguished Service Award, and the NASPA Latino Knowledge Community Outstanding Faculty Award.

Dr. Rendón earned a Ph.D. in higher education administration from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She holds a M.A. in counseling and guidance and psychology from Texas A&M University-Kingsville (1975).

The Conference closing speaker will be Dr. Amalia Mesa-Bains, focusing on “Transformative Visual Language and Community Knowledge: Arts and Civic Engagement.”

Amalia Mesa-Bains is a Professor Emerita from California State University Monterey Bay, Department of Visual and Public Art.  She is an independent artist and cultural critic. Her works, primarily interpretations of traditional Chicano altars, resonate both in contemporary formal terms and in their ties to her community and history. As an author of scholarly articles and a nationally known lecturer on Latino art, she has enhanced understanding of multiculturalism and reflected major cultural and demographic shifts in the United States.

Dr. Mesa-Bains was the curator for the traveling Ceremony of Memory exhibit and the regional committee chair (Northern California) for the exhibition Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985 (CARA).
She also has written extensively on Chicano art and culture. Among her many awards is a 1992 Distinguished MacArthur Fellowship. She has served as a consultant for the Texas State Council on the Arts and the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and is a former Commissioner of Arts for the City of San Francisco.   Dr. Mesa-Bains is the co-author of Ceremony of Spirit: Nature and Memory in Contemporary Latino Art and Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism (with bell hooks).

She holds a BA in painting from San Jose State University, an MA in interdisciplinary education from San Francisco State University, and an earned an MA and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the School of Clinical Psychology, Wright Institute in Berkeley.

Conference attendees are those interested in academic based Service-Learning for Pre-K through PhD students, non-profit community partners and graduate students interested in educational policy and community development. Conference attendees will learn about the best educational practices in student retention, instructional technology, interdisciplinary pedagogy, and social media to deepen service-learning and civic engagement practices plus community development and assessment of community partnership.

For more information visit the IARSLCE web site at http://www.researchslce.org/conferences. The conference co-chairs are Kathy Engelken, Executive Director, Illinois Campus Compact and Howard Rosing, Ph.D. Executive Director, Irwin W. Steans Center for Community-Based Service Learning & Community Service Studies at DePaul University.  To schedule an interview with one of the conference co-chairs, speakers or for more information on service-learning and community engagement pedagogy please contact Hope Daniels at 312-369-8157.

About IARSLCE
The International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) is an international non-profit organization devoted to promoting research and discussion about service-learning and community engagement. IARSLCE was launched in 2005, and incorporated in 2007. Its mission is to promote the development and dissemination of research on service-learning and community engagement internationally and across all levels of the education system.