Establishing and Sustaining a Community Service-Learning Office, Revisted: Top Ten Tips

Since 1992, when I first became involved with service-learning, the resources offering guidance through principles, benchmarks, best practices, and research findings on how to design, implement, and evaluate service-learning experiences have grown tremendously. While these resources help us to do our work better, they do not necessarily enable us to become the reflective community service-learning professionals that we must be in order for service-learning to fulfill its potential. Establishing and Sustaining an Office of Community Service (Campus Compact, 2000), now out of print, served many of us well. Its focus, however, was on the program or office and not on you, whose job is to establish and sustain yourself as an outstanding professional who will, in turn, sustain an outstanding community service-learning program or office. This chapter is coming directly from me to you. I have established and sustained an office and myself as a professional, although it hasn't always been easy. I've been laboring very happily in the community service-learning vineyard since 1992 and have my top ten tips that I'd like to share with you. Throughout this chapter, you will also find quotes from several outstanding colleagues who have generously shared their stories. [author]