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Service-Learning
Welcome to USM's service-learning
page. It is our hope that all faculty and
students will engage in service that strengthens our
ties in the community and fosters personal well being.
This is a new and developing
website, so please bear with us as we continue to improve
over time.
Please
contact us
for any questions or suggestions you may have at this time.
Civic Engagement
Service-learning and civic
engagement are not
the same thing in the
sense that not all service-learning
has a civic dimension and not all
civic engagement is service-learning. For definition’s
sake,
civic
engagement is the broader motif, encompassing service-learning but not
limited to it. One useful definition of civic engagement is the
following: individual and collective
actions
designed to identify and
address issues of public concern. Civic engagement can take many forms,
from individual volunteerism to organizational involvement to
electoral participation.
It can include efforts to directly address an issue,
work with others in a community
to solve a problem or interact with the
institutions of representative democracy. Civic engagement encompasses
a range of specific activities such as working in a soup kitchen,
serving on a neighborhood
association, writing a letter to an elected
official or voting. Indeed, an underlying principle of our approach is
that an engaged citizen should have the ability, agency and opportunity to move
comfortably among these various types of civic acts.
Source:
Michael Delli Carpini, Director, Public Policy, The Pew
Charitable Trusts.
Civic Engagement
at USM |
