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DePaul University – Irwin W. Steans Center

Irwin W. Steans Center was established as the Office for Community-based Service Learning at DePaul University in 1998. The center was established as part of the university’s commitment to serving those who are least served by society. Under the guidance of its founding director, Dr. Laurie Worrall, the Steans Center focuses on integrating service-learning pedagogy into the curriculum. Since its establishment, the Steans Center has experienced tremendous growth to an extent that it has become a vibrant community engagement center at DePaul University. Currently, the center supports over 4000 students annually as well as hundreds of community partners and faculty members (“Steans Center History”, 2022).

As stated on DePaul University’s website, the mission of the Steans Center is to integrate service-learning pedagogy into the curriculum. In this regard, the center seeks to provide support for the direct integration of service throughout the university’s curriculum. By providing such support, the center seeks to ensure that serving others or community service permeates the minds and actions of all DePaul University’s students, staff, and faculty. The Steans Center seeks to promote the integration of service-learning pedagogy into the curriculum by developing high-quality service-learning and community engagement initiatives. Such initiatives seek to support the learning and personal and professional growth of individual students at the university. Moreover, such initiatives are focused on faculty scholarship and supporting partner organizations to develop assets for community service.

The Steans Center engages in various community service projects that are aligned with its mission. The projects are divided into two broad categories including community engagement and public service programs. Some examples of community engagement programs include community mapping, homelessness initiatives, public health initiatives for different populations including those with mental health problems, and educational programs. On the other hand, public service programs focus on different educational programs across various disciplines such as arts, culture, community and economic development, and social issues. Community engagement and public service programs are relevant to the Steans Center’s mission as they provide avenues for relevant stakeholders to offer expertise, service, and resources to the community.

As an educator, working at the Steans Center would provide an opportunity to play a critical role in promoting the integration of community service into the learning curriculum. My role in such a position would involve engaging students and community members to identify existing needs and use such insights to shape curriculum development initiatives. In addition, my work would involve collaborating with different stakeholders to shape service-based learning at the university. Such collaboration would help me understand course descriptions, student learning objectives, reflection, and learning modes in relation to service-based learning. Through collaboration with others, I will focus on exploring the links between insights from the classroom and the practical needs of community members.

This service-learning for higher education course would enhance my understanding of service-based curriculum and learning. I believe that this course gives me an opportunity to identify how education can be used as a tool for serving communities through collaboration between students, faculty, and staff. I would love to learn how to link service and learning through reflective processes. This essentially means that my main focus in this course is to gain insights into how to combine classroom instruction with meaningful community service. I believe that this course would help prepare me for community-based problem solving as it combined learning with community service (Heffernan, n.d.).