We appreciate your interest and look forward to building a relationship with you that addresses community needs and supports student learning. This page will help you distinguish service-learning from community volunteer work, and provide examples of collaborative relationships between Dickinson and various community-based organizations.
Dickinson College encourages and supports a wide range of student volunteer activities in the community, coordinated by the Center for Civic Learning & Action. These are extra-curricular activities that students choose to engage in, whether individually or through student organizations. If your organization has volunteer opportunities, please contact this office directly.
By contrast, Service-Learning is academically-driven. A faculty member works with a community partner to identify service or research opportunities that would benefit the local organization and connect directly to the course curriculum. In order to assure the integration of the community-based experience with the academic work, careful planning is critical. Planning is necessary to create the desired reciprocity and mutual benefit. For more information about creating a partnership with a faculty member for a service-learning project or to collaborate with our faculty and students about research questions that would make a difference in your work, please contact Gary Kirk.
Service-learning Partners
Follow these links for lists of service-learning and community-based research partnerships, organized by field/focus of work of the community partner and by academic department.