Unheard Voices Community Organizations and Ser vice Learning

Every year, tens of thousands of college students make their way into the community in the name of ser vice learning. They tutor, paint, serve soup, build databases, conduct surveys, or ga nize meetings, run errands, and all manner of other things. Many of them, maybe even the majority, do it to meet a college or university graduation requirement, to receive course credit, or both. Ser vice learning has now become an institutionalized practice in higher education. From small community colleges to the most prestigious PhDgranting institutions, the practice of sending students into communities that are defi ned as disadvantaged has become a part of the curriculum and even the requirements of an increasing number of higher education institutions. A lot of institutional hype accompanies these students, and much research promotes the positive impact the practice has on student grades, attitudes, and sensitivities (Lansverk, 2004; Ender et al., 2000; Mooney and Edwards, 2001; MyersLipton, 1998; ParkerGwin and Mabry, 1998; Krain and Nurse, 2004). There are also claims of the positive impact that ser vice learning has on communities but, as we fi nd, there is much less research to back up those claims (Cruz and Giles, 2000). Consequently, making ser vice 1 Unheard Voices