First Four Years, (The): The Journey through the Development of a Service Learning Program at a Community College

Building and sustaining a substantive service-learning program over the past four years at Kingsborough Community College has been no easy feat. There have been roadblocks and victories, u‐turns and detours, and to paraphrase the late Frederick Douglass, African American civil rights leader and abolitionist, "without struggle, there is no progress." These struggles have indeed left the program with opportunities for our own reflection and evaluation in order to enhance the program. Throughout the development of the program, the staff has come to several realizations of what it will take to ensure continued success of a service-learning program at Kingsborough Community College. Among these are the need for increased institutional sponsorship, maintaining a strong brand identity as a program, continued relevancy with the college community, increased departmental support for faculty members, publicized benefits to faculty members, and most importantly, a continued discussion of how all stakeholders can work to benefit each other within the web‐like system that a service-learning program engenders. [authors]