Madison House is incredibly excited about their newly funded Engaged Learning Initiative. With generous support from the UVA Parents Fund and The Jefferson Trust, the Community-Engaged Learning and Leadership Initiative will support faculty who want to utilize Madison House programs for community-engaged course service placements. For example, in this semester (its pilot semester), Prof. Esther Poveda’s Spanish class on “Social Justice Writing for Change”partnered with the Latinx and Migrant Aid program at Madison House; students worked with Sin Barreras and in local elementary schools to support bilingual children and their parents who speak mostly Spanish.
Creating a Culture of Service
For 50 years, Madison House has provided UVA students with volunteer opportunities in the communities around the University. Last year, more than 3,000 students volunteered through Madison House and dedicated more than 100,000 hours of service with over 100 schools, organizations, and agencies in the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Three hundred more students served as Program Directors, Head Program Directors, and Board members, gaining practical community-based leadership experience while supervising their peers. However, because of the history, culture, and traditions of student self-governance at the University of Virginia, community-based learning and research at UVA has developed separately from the student volunteer experience. This puts Madison House and UVA well behind our peer institutions both nationally and within the Commonwealth in terms of service and community engagement best practices. The goal of this program is to grow President Ryan’s vision of a University that is both “great and good,” and creating a culture of service that helps students see volunteering not as separate from the intellectual and academic development at UVA but instead as integral to it.
Discovery in the Classroom
Faculty have already been responding to this disconnect between “best practices” and Madison House traditions, with some English faculty using placements at Loaves and Fishes food pantry as part of courses on food insecurity, for example. This new initiative will help us institutionalize these changes by harnessing what makes Madison House unique – student leadership and autonomy – in the service of best practices for community-based courses.
Building New Partnerships
Faculty who are interested in service placements through Madison House will express interest and be paired with a relevant program or programs and a student “Engaged Learning Mentor” (ELM), who will help with all of the logistics of volunteering for the class. The cohort of ELMs will meet together regularly and take a one-credit course on community engagement taught through the Vice Provost for Academic Outreach’s office. The goal for ELMs will be not just to support their faculty member and course, but also to help each Madison House program think about ways to deepen the training and opportunities for reflection for all Madison House volunteers. The ELM application will be available on March 1 on the Madison House website. Anyone who is interested in community-based courses should visit the EngagedUVA website. The fall cohort of Madison House ELI courses will be available on Madison House’s website and EngagedUVA before the end of the semester. In the meantime, anyone who is interested should email rose@madisonhouse.org.
About the Author:
Dr. Rose Cole is the Director of Community Engagement at Madison House. Rose is a practitioner, scholar, and evaluator of public service programming and community-based teaching, learning, and research. She spent the past five years working at the University of Virginia supporting public service and community engagement within the division of Student Affairs. Rose is passionate about creating and growing capacity for equitable and ethical community-based learning experiences at UVA. Her research and publications focus on college student activism, community-based curricular experiences, civic identity development, and higher education for global citizenship. Besides working with Madison House programs, Rose also leads Madison House's new Engaged Learning Initiative.