Students
Community-Based and Service Learning
Community-based and service learning are field-based “experiential learning” with community partners. The idea is to give students direct experience with issues they are studying in the curriculum and with ongoing efforts to analyze and solve problems in the community. A key element in these programs is the opportunity students have to both apply what they are learning in real-world settings and reflect in a classroom setting on their service experiences. These programs model the idea that giving something back to the community is an important college outcome, and that working with community partners is good preparation for citizenship, work, and life.
The Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics Center, also known as the AMRoC Fab Lab, located in University Mall is one such space for USF students. "It gets them off of campus, out into the community, it helps them to be a positive in the neighborhood and to get to know their neighbors, and it allows the neighborhood to know us,” said Lindy Davidson, Associate Dean for Curriculum & Instruction in the Judy Genshaft Honors College.
You can read more abou the AMRoC Fab Lab here.
The Public Health Innovation Studio course allows undergraduate students to work with
graduate-level public health students, faculty, and community partners to identify
strategies for building community resilience and social capital. Students are introduced
to concepts and methods of quantitative and qualitative research to help document
service-learning community-based projects conducted with an interdisciplinary team
aimed to identify public health solutions. Students will learn how to use multi-faceted
tools and are expected to reflect on the role of research and project design on the
individual, family, at risk community, county, and region as a whole.
The Summer Public Health Innovation Studio will focus on key topics based on pre-identified
needs in the Tampa Bay area. Students will team up with community partners to engage
with diverse populations and stakeholders in the community. In the past, students
have worked with refugee women regarding food security and advocacy, helping to prepared
at risk communities for hurricane season, and helped with community needs assessments
for populations living in poverty. This is an in-person course where we will go out
into the community. Faculty and students will meet in-person every Friday from 9:00am-5:00pm
during Summer B.
For further inquiries, please contact the lead instructor Elizabeth A. Dunn, MPH, CPH at eadunn2@usf.edu.