Buca
Forrester, a junior studying elementary education at UNF, spends his Monday
evenings at a local elementary school with about 10 of his new best friends —
at least the ones under 4 feet tall.
The
Jacksonville Beach resident never thought he would spend serious time with a
group of kindergartners, their parents and siblings and enjoy it so much. And
while he is officially one of the teachers in the classroom, he said he has
learned more from the kindergartners and their families than he has taught
them.
“I can read
about all of this in a book,” Forrester said. “And I can practice on campus
with my classmates and I can role-play with my professors, but I cannot get the
hands-on knowledge anywhere else but in a real classroom with real people and
real-life situations. Every week, I learn more from both the kids and their
families. I cannot learn that from a book.”
Dr. Katrina
Hall, a professor in the Department of Childhood Education, agrees. “Our UNF
students have to really be able to work with real students in a real setting
with real goals,” she said.
And to that
end, Hall and her colleagues, Drs. Gigi David and Lunetta Williams, developed a
program to benefit students in the College of Education and Human Services and kindergarten
students at a Jacksonville elementary school. Their idea, which is now a community-based
Transformational Learning Opportunity (TLO), teams UNF students in an integrated
arts class with 15 kindergartners and their parents at Woodland Acres
Elementary School, a UNF urban development school. The UNF students learn how
to collaborate and become better teachers and the kindergartners and their
parents or caregivers are taught how to “share high-quality books and age-appropriate
arts-based activities to build children’s basic concept knowledge and literacy
skills,” said David. “The siblings have an opportunity to develop oral language
skills in the context of sharing books, games and activities. The UNF students
prepare take-home activity bags to enhance the home learning environment of the
participating families and they contact the families between workshop sessions
to provide the students additional authentic opportunities to interact with the
caregivers.”
“The UNF
students spend two weeks with each group: the parents, the
kindergartners and the siblings,” Hall
said. “They develop the ability to work together as a teaching team. Since it is Dr. David's
integrated arts class that the UNF students are enrolled in, they use books,
art prints and arts-based activities designed to develop academic skills to
help the kindergartners and to equip their parents to support school learning
in an engaging manner. And
while they can read about things like this in a textbook and think it is going
to be super, until you are there doing it, you don’t really appreciate it.”
One of the
hallmarks of a UNF education is that students graduate with degrees that carry
with them the current academic thinking, best practices in any given discipline
and the practical, hands-on experience that potential employers want. One way UNF
students get all that is through community-based programs such as the one Hall
described.
What has
long been the mission of the University is now being recognized formally. UNF
has received the prestigious 2010 Community Engagement Classification from the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in recognition of the
University’s exceptional commitment to community engagement.
The classification
is given to institutions that demonstrate a mission, culture, leadership,
resources and practices that support “dynamic and noteworthy community
engagement” as well as programs to promote civic engagement.
UNF is among
115 institutions in the country to be added to the classification this year. Only
about 10 percent of colleges and universities have earned the Carnegie
Community Engagement Classification since it began in 2006.
“This
special designation shows that the University of North Florida is helping
students become good citizens who care for their community,” said UNF Provost
Dr. Mark Workman. “The University is clearly making strides in finding ways for
its students to become engaged and to make a difference through their education
by contributing to Northeast Florida.”
Said Dr. Mark Falbo, the director of the Center for
Community-Based Learning, “The designation matters in times like this. When we
are faced with an economic scarcity, people look for what might be valued-added
to a public education. The public expects competency, but they also want to see
the kinds of graduates we are putting out who are responsive to the public good
and who are good citizens making a difference in their community and with their
degrees.”
Colleges and
universities with an institutional focus on community engagement were invited
to apply for the classification, first offered in 2006 as part of an extensive
restructuring of the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher
Education. Unlike the foundation’s other classifications that rely on national
data, this is an “elective” classification — institutions elect to participate
by submitting required documentation describing the nature and extent of their
engagement with the community, be it local or beyond.
“Through a
classification that acknowledges significant commitment to and demonstration of
community engagement, the foundation encourages colleges and universities to
become more deeply engaged, to improve teaching and learning and to generate
socially responsive knowledge to benefit communities,” said Carnegie President
Anthony Bryk. “We are very pleased with the movement we are seeing in this
direction.”
Workman
believes the community engagement classification underscores the very basis of
an education at this institution. “It confirms our commitment not only to
graduating students with academic competencies, but also with an awareness of
civic responsibility,” he said. “And since 70 percent of UNF graduates remain
in the region after they finish a degree, they contribute significantly to the
advancement of our region not only economically but also as a community. Our
community is dependent upon the infusion of these talented and publically minded
citizens.”
“For
the past two decades, we have been working in academia to reclaim the University
as a public good,” Falbo said. “It is not enough in this economy just to say we
are educating people competent in their discipline. We can no longer settle for
19th- and 20th-century levels of education. We need to
produce graduates who know what it means to be critical thinkers; who know what
it means to build a better society; who think for themselves and others.”
Workman said
he believes that this particular Carnegie designation confirms and celebrates
the longstanding and mutually beneficial relationship between the University
and the region. “If you were to take UNF out of Jacksonville, UNF would be a
profoundly different University and Jacksonville would be a profoundly
different city – to the
detriment of both.”
The foundation,
through the work of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, developed the
first typology of American colleges and universities in 1970 as a research tool
to describe and represent the diversity of U.S. higher education. The Carnegie
Classification of Institutions of Higher Education continues to be used for a
wide range of purposes by academic researchers, institutional personnel,
policymakers and others.
At UNF,
evidence of community engagement can be seen in nearly every discipline in
every college. And the official classification is now giving UNF national
recognition for those efforts.
“UNF is all
about getting the hands-on experience that complements what we learn in the
classroom,” Forrester said. “I know when I graduate, my degree will be much
more credible because of UNF’s reputation for community-engaged learning. I
know I will be a much better teacher for it, as well.”
