Community colleges are centers for educational opportunities. They are an American invention that put publicly funded higher education at close-to-home facilities in our communities beginning nearly 100 years ago.
As part of our mission at Jackson State Community College, Service Learning combines community service with academic instruction, focusing on:
- Critical thinking and problem solving
- Values clarification
- Social and personal development
- Civic and community responsibility
- Global, cultural, and inter-generational scope
What is Service Learning?
The National and Community Service Acts of 1990 define service learning with a set of criteria:
- Under which students learn and develop through participation in thoughtfully organized service experiences that meet actual community needs and that are coordinated in collaboration with the school and community;
- That is integrated into the student’s academic curriculum or provides structured time for a student to think, talk, or write about what the student did and saw during the actual service activity;
- That enhances what is taught in school by extending student learning beyond the classroom and into the community and helps to foster the development of a sense of caring for others.