Illini Mentor Program: Connecting to Community through Co-curricular Service-Learning
I'm the co-founder and staff advisor for
Illini Mentor Program, a registered student organization of the University of Illinois that is dedicated to fostering meaningful and consistent mentoring relationships between University students and children in the local community with the goal of supporting learning, growth, skill-building, and interracial and cultural understanding. See our poster from the Public Engagement Symposium:
IMP Poster.pdf
2009 Social Entrepreneurship Summer Institute: June 12-13, 19-20, 26-27
SESI consists of a three-weekend program of workshops and presentations delivered by faculty and invited speakers, which emphasizes a curriculum related to business skills and social entrepreneurship. The institute provides business education outreach to professional staff working in the non-profit sector along with University of Illinois students with diverse majors. In addition to learning with community partners during the institute, student fellows spend the summer working in teams with the participating non-profit organizations to address community needs in innovative and sustainable ways through the application of social entrepreneurship concepts.
Fellows are required to enroll in the affiliated course,
BUS 199: Social Entrepreneurship & the Citizen Leader, which is intended to provide structure and support to maximize learning and accountability during the academic service-learning internships. In addition to teaching the service-learning course, as the Director of Curriculum and Service-Learning for SESI, I consult with Collette Niland (Executive Director) and Stacy Bennett (Director of External Relations) to develop and coordinate curriculum for the institute.
Call for Presenters SESI2009_CallforPresenters.pdf
Call for Student Applications: Social Entrepreneurship Fellows SESI2009_StudentApplication.pdf
See the poster from the 2008 Social Entrepreneurship Showcase
SESI2008_ShowcasePoster.pdf
Community Stewardship through Environmental Education
In collaboration with staff from the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Program (Robin Goettel and Terri Hallesy) and faculty from the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (Cory Suski and Joanne Vining), I developed and provide instructional support for the service-learning course,
NRES 285: Community Stewardship through Environmental Education. In this course, U of I students learn about topics related to biodiversity, ecosystem health, and the effects of aquatic invasive species. They work in small groups with school teachers to teach children about these topics, using the "Nab the Aquatic Invader" website
http://www.sgnis.org/kids/ and interactive, science-based activities. And, they develop community stewardship projects with the children to increase the public's awareness about aquatic invasive species and their negative impacts and to inspire community action to control and prevent their spread.
Rob Kanter highlighted two of the projects from the Spring 2009 course on the Environmental Almanac on April 16th. Listen to audio links of songs that were written and recorded by Zanne Newman’s 4th grade students at Stratton Elementary with the help of WILL audio production manager Mike Pritchard. And, watch a public service announcement video created by Whitney Stewart's 8th grade students at Franklin Middle School.
http://environmentalalmanac.blogspot.com/2009/04/champaign-4th-graders-collaborate-with.html
This multi-level service-learning program was supported by the COSEE Great Lakes Project and the Provost's Initiative on Teaching Advancement and involved collaboration with the following school and community partners: Edison Middle School, Franklin Middle School, Stratton Elementary School, Thomas Paine Elementary School, Anita Purves Nature Center, Champaign County Forest Preserve District, Champaign Public Library, Environmental Almanac, Orpheum Children's Science Museum, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Prairie Rivers Network, and Urbana Free Library.
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These spammers on here are annoying.
Just read through your latest blog posts. I continue to be amazed by the wonderful resources you put up here for us. Thank you!
I didn't see a way to write anything on the main page of this site, so I thought I'd just write it here. I really enjoyed Scott's presentation on Monday. I got a lot out of it. I also wanted to let you know that I enjoyed this format, too. I look forward to the other presentations as well.
It looks like Scott isn't on here, otherwise I'd write something on his wall to let him know I enjoyed his presentation.
Thanks, Val, for all you do!
How did the reading group go on Friday? I was at a conference near Chicago, so I couldn't make it. I'll be interested to know what the topics of discussion were.
What should I read for this week? What topic will we cover?