Activating Service Learning in Entrepreneurship & Leadership

Activating Service Learning in Entrepreneurship & Leadership

Grant:
Faculty Development Fund (FDF)
Academic Year:
2022 - 2023 (June 1, 2022 through May 31, 2023)
Funding Requested:
$6,000.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
acuyler
Overview of the Project:
Through this project, I will identify, select, and partner with 25 cultural organizations across the U. S. to implement service learning in three courses: Arts in Community Engagement, Cultural Policy, and Managing Cultural Organizations About, By, For, and Near People of the Global Majority. Research has found, at a minimum, that implementing service learning into these courses will lead to gains in academic abilities, career skills development, and an overall positive college experience for students (Cuyler, 2017; Cuyler, 2018; Miller et al., 2022). Furthermore, successfully implementing service learning into my courses, could compel further evidence-based curricular enhancements because this project represents a potential improvement upon and departure from existing practice within the Department of Entrepreneurship & Leadership because few courses utilize service learning or community service as an opportunity to innovate in teaching and learning within the discipline. I will use analysis of student work, course assignment, documents review, and syllabi to disseminate, document, and evaluate this project’s four SMART goals.
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:

The following consummated the project's objectives:

  1. By December of 2022, I will have identified, selected, and contacted 25 cultural organizations across the U. S. to host service learning placements in my Arts in Community Engagement, Cultural Policy, and Managing Cultural Organizations About, By, For, and Near People of the Global Majority courses.
  2. By December of 2022, I will have oriented the 25 co-educators to their roles as hosts for service learners.
  3. By April 18, 2022, I will have prepared three course syllabi in which service learning is a substantive component of the courses and which the Department of Entrepreneurship & Leadership can use to propose the three courses as permanent additions to the curriculum.
  4. By April 18, 2022, I will have assessed the planning and implementation of this project through critical reflection.
Project Achievements:

To date, I have accomplished the following:

  1. I have identified, selected, and contacted 25 cultural organizations (Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, Ann Arbor Symphony, Arts Administrators of Color Network, Arab American Museum, Arts Prevail Project, Asian Opera Alliance, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Hispanico, Black and Brown Theatre, Black Beanz Akron, Charles H. Wright Museum, Deeply Rooted Dance, Delou Africa, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Symphony, Diamano Coura West, Golden Thread Productions, Houston Grand Opera, Iibada Dance Company, John F. Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New Orleans Opera, Out of Hand Theatre, PUSH Dance Company, and Sphinx Organization) across the U. S. to host service learning placements in my Arts in Community Engagement and Managing Cultural Organizations About, By, For, and Near People of the Global Majority courses.
  2. I have oriented 5 co-educators (Arts Administrators of Color Network, Black and Brown Theatre, Kennedy Center, Out of Hand Theatre, and Sphinx Organization) to their roles as hosts for service learners.
  3. I have prepared two course syllabi in which service learning is a substantive component of the courses and which the Department of Entrepreneurship & Leadership can use to propose the two courses as permanent additions to the curriculum.

Completing this project has affirmed the importance of using service learning in my courses. While completing this project, I made the connection between service learning and deliberate practice (Ericsson and Moxley, 2012; Ericsson, Pool, & Runnette, 2016) or "considerable, specific, and sustained efforts to do something you can't do well or even at all." Given the context of a performing arts school, folx in the School of Music, Theatre and Dance (SMTD) understand deliberate practice as critical to honing the skills necessary to become an expert dance, music, or theatre professional. Leadership and management are no different. In fact, I believe so strongly that service learning provides students with the deliberate practice that they need to develop leadership and management skills that in the future I plan to base 50% of my students' grade on their completion of 50 hours of service learning. Within the Department of Entrepreneurship & Leadership few courses utilize the high impact practice as an opportunity to innovate in teaching and learning within the discipline. This project demonstrates that faculty can meaningfully employ community engaged teaching in their courses to enable a triple win for cultural organizations (co-educators/partners), students, and faculty. Ultimately, with the support of my department chair, I aspire to develop an arts leadership service learning clinic that will enable the department to partner with cultural organizations across the mid-west and country, especially in rural areas to support them in achieving their missions while educating our students.

Continuation:
Yes, this project will continue beyond the grant period. Unfortunately, because of their schedules I have to offer more onboarding workshops to the 20 co-educators who have not been available starting May 1. The revised plan is to have the 20 remaining co-educators on boarded by May 5. I also applied for a SUCCEED grant to expand the network to include more co-educators and to establish an advisory board of 5 previous co-educators.
Dissemination:
In February, I learned that the Office of the Vice President for Research selected me as a 2023 Public Engagement Faculty Mentor Fellow. This is one way that I plan to disseminate the project's activities. In the future, I also plan to advocate service learning as deliberate practice at future conferences on teaching and learning in arts entrepreneurship and leadership.
Advice to your Colleagues:
In retrospect, I wish that I had given myself more time. While most colleagues accepted my invitation to partner with me as co-educators, I did not anticipate the difficulty I would have in identifying dates for the onboarding workshops. I also did not find out that I received the FDF grant until December 15. It was unrealistic that I could stick with the originally articulated timeline as a result.
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