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The recent disaster in New Orleans has further strengthened a longstanding commitment to community service at Tulane. The Center for Public Service aims to play a key role in rebuilding New Orleans as a city whose culture and community are cherished and as a city that works for all of its residents. The Center for Public service envisions the community service side of CPS to provide opportunities for others to benefit from the Tulane student's time and energy. CPS also believes that we can help harness the energy of non-Tulane students and non-New Orleans residents to help rebuild the City of New Orleans. The Center for Public Service hopes that through the community service work that a sense of community development will form and students and non-students will reflect on community related matters or community building encounters with a sense of urgency and commitment. The goals of community service through the Center for Public Service at Tulane are to engage students through reflection and learning and inspire them to respond with creative problem solving, compassionate concern and a strong sense of social and civic responsibility for the long-term health of the community in which they live. We will accomplish these goals in collaboration with our consortium institutions and our community partners. Student involvement in community service through the Center for Public Service includes Student Programs/Student Affairs. Service learning, which the Center for Public Service focuses on, combines community service with a learning component and in the collegiate context typically is supervised by a faculty member or maybe a student affairs professional and carries with it academic credit and/or is part of the course requirement. We can look at this as collaboration between Student programs/Student Affairs and the Center for Public Service. Working in partnership to develop a sense of community or civic mindedness within the students. Developing this sense of community-mindedness is necessary to develop the future leaders' sense of community-oriented development and importance. This will, through the partnership between the Center for Public Service and Student Programs/Student Affairs, encourage the development of the students' knowledge and desire to strive to solve the important social problems through action and reflection. This partnership does not take away from the student run programs that have been the staple point of Student Affairs/Student Programs but enhances it by demonstrating that their community service is and can be a part of Service learning. The students success and community involvement are the focus for both departments, and their efforts to service the community can be achieved without sacrificing control over their programs. A partnership between CPS and Student Programs/Student Affairs means more opportunities for the students to service the community. |
