What We Did
Two days after the February 22, 2011 earthquake, I was watching a news broadcast showing the Student Volunteer Army members. The news anchor said “Isn’t it great that these students have put aside their learning to help out in the community.” His separation of learning and service inspired me to send a quick email to Deputy Vice Chancellor Nello Angerilli with a vague idea of bringing the students’ service experiences back onto campus within an academic context. He responded immediately and positively and gave me 24 hours to develop my idea further for a Skype call with Vice Chancellor Rod Carr. In addition to my PhD student, Lane Perry, working alongside me I then reached out to two colleagues in the US – Patti Clayton who is a well renowned guru in service-learning and was my mentor and Vincent Ilustre who was the Director of Center for Public Service at Tulane University in New Orleans. When faced with their own disaster of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Tulane chose to make service-learning related to the rebuild of New Orleans mandatory for all students. By 2011 with their messaging around this firmly in place, they were receiving +40,000 applications for 1500 spots from students who wanted to do service.
With Patti’s and Vincent’s assistance, we created a framework for a class, CHCH101: Rebuilding Christchurch, that would take into account students’ service as one-third of the requirements completed and then combine that with academic content about disaster response and volunteering and assessments focused on critical reflection.
With limited marketing, CHCH101 was launched in July of 2011 with 105 students who had all been part of the SVA. After a first meeting with everyone, they participated in tutorials led by the SVA tutors where they linked their service with academic content and critical reflection. Not knowing if this would be a one and done or become an integral part of UC like Tulane, we tentatively made plans for 2012 summer school and had 120 students across two occurrences. The course has been integral to the establishment of the UC Community Engagement Hub, the “engaged with the community” attribute of the UC Graduate Profile, and the creation and implementaiton of the Bachelor of Youth and Community Leadership.
Who Was Involved
I have worked with many organisations through the origin and development of CHCH101.
Why It Matters
The CHCH101 course brought the SVA’s disaster response back onto campus by providing an academic context within which students could reflect on their experiences. As it has evolved over the last nine years, its impact is in the thousands of students who have taken it and the community partners with whom they have interacted.
