Research Guides: Service Learning: Service Learning at Temple

Service Learning Courses - College of Public Health

This section lists service learning courses with credits (listed below in full with credits) or courses with some aspects of service learning within the College of Public Health. Additional service learning integration is in progress, so check the current year TU Bulletin for changes and updates.

Temple has a long history of offering service-learning courses. Service-learning courses from other colleges will be added over time. These include: URBE 5515 (Urban Education). Service Learning and Community Development; EDUC 2224 (Education). Service Learning; and RUS 3201 (Russian language). Service Learning in Russian I. Historically, Temple designated Service Learning courses.

Image source: Despite COVID challenges, OT students create and deliver adaptive devices.

School of Social Work

SSWU 2089. Service Learning in the Social Work Profession.
2 Credit Hours.
In this course students will arrange a 60-hour service learning experience, or a series of experiences totaling 60 hours. Through this experience students will develop an understanding of the social service delivery system at multiple levels, as they engage in and reflect in selected service tasks and test their own suitability for social work as a career. The purpose of this lab is to engage students in a service learning experience where they will have the opportunity to apply the skills, values, and principals discussed in SSWU 2005 and SSWU 2006. Students' academic learning will be enriched and meaningful civic learning will take place as they integrate textbook concepts with community needs. Assignments will require students to utilize critical thinking while they combine course themes and text content with experience, analysis, and action.
Co-requisites: SSWU 2006.
SSWU 3016. Lab for Helping Processes in Social Work II.
1 Credit Hour.
Students will arrange a service learning experience through Temple University's Office of Community Service. Through this experience students will begin to develop an understanding of the social service delivery system at multiple levels, as they engage in selected service tasks and continue to assess their own suitability for social work as a career.
Co-requisites: SSWU 3006.

Other College of Public Health Departments

Communication Sciences and Disorders

CSCD 3232. Introduction to Aphasia and Evidence-Based Communicative Interventions.
This course will provide the opportunity to learn about aphasia, including treatment approaches for this population. Students will complete a field project in which they will work with people who have aphasia.
CSCD 3236. Cultural and Linguistic Diversity: Focus on Autism
This course will provide the opportunity to learn about autism, including treatment approaches for this population, and about service to the under-served immigrant community in Philadelphia. Students will complete field projects in which they will work with families where a child has been diagnosed with autism. These projects will occur in community settings and at Temple University.

Doctor of Physical Therapy Program

PHTH 8150. Service Education Reflection and Volunteerism Elective
This course will cover topics that reflect current and anticipated needs in current physical therapy practice. Topics offered vary across areas of specialized clinical practice and clinical research activities of departmental faculty members.
PHTH 8531. Pro Bono Clinical Practice.
Students have the opportunity to apply knowledge and skills that they are currently learning in a real practice setting. The clinical services are delivered in the College of Public Health's North Broad Physical Therapy Center which is a pro bono clinic providing health and health care services to individuals who are uninsured, under-insured, or do not have the financial means to make their copays.

Occupational Therapy

OTHR 5014. Person-Environment Dynamics in Occupation.
This course introduces the synthesizing of perspectives for designing and implementing meaningful activities and occupations for individuals or populations considering the reciprocal and dynamic nature of person-environment interactions.
OTHR 5123. Occupational Therapy Practice: Assistive Technology.
This course focuses on learning about the various types of assistive technology devices and occupational therapy services including but not limited to evaluation and assessment, selection and training, procurement, legislation and funding. Students prepare an adaptive design project.
OTHR 5221. Health & Wellness in the Community
The student learns how to promote health and wellness programs for individuals, populations, and organizations using contemporary occupational therapy and health behavior models.

Recreational Therapy

RCTH 1102. Inclusive Recreation and Sports Services.
This course introduces students to the range of assistive devices used with persons with disabilities to support physically and socially active involvement in recreation and leisure pursuits. Students learn to adapt activity materials to accommodate varying functional abilities and how to use assistive devices, ranging from simple adaptive sports equipment to augmentative communication devices, with individuals with disabilities.
RCTH 2203. Assistive Technology in Recreation
Students learn to adapt activity materials to accommodate varying functional abilities and how to use assistive devices, ranging from simple adaptive sports equipment to augmentative communication devices, with individuals with disabilities.
THRC 8161. Methods in Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) for Health

Public Health Without Borders, taught by Dr. Graciela Jaschek in EPIBIO (partially met... “students complete projects in the community but they are all centered in community observations (environmental scan and community mapping), a one-on-one interview with a community member and an educational flyer to be posted at a community business or church,” according to Dr. Jaschek)
Fieldwork projects with community organizations (taught by Dr. Krys Johnson in EPIBIO, faculty member in SBS, and faculty member in HSAP)
Program Planning course, taught by Dr. Annie Frankel in SBS (“partners with an agency every semester)

Temple University Press Publications

Temple University Press has published several service learning and community engagement books. In additional to those listed below, a handbook for faculty, staff and graduate students on meaningful, authentic community engagement and service learning is underway and when published, will be posted here.

Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement by Randy Stoecker
ISBN: 9781439913536
Publication Date: 2016-05-23
Randy Stoecker has been "practicing" forms of community-engaged scholarship, including service learning, for thirty years now, and he readily admits, "Practice does not make perfect." The author worries about the contradictions, unrealized potential, and unrecognized urgency of the causes as well as the risks and rewards of this work. Stoecker questions the prioritization and theoretical/philosophical underpinnings of the core concepts of service learning: 1. learning, 2. service, 3. community, and 4. change. By "liberating" service learning, he suggests reversing the prioritization of the concepts, starting with change, then community, then service, and then learning. In doing so, he clarifies the benefits and purpose of this work, arguing that it will create greater pedagogical and community impact.
The Unheard Voices by Randy Stoecker (Editor); Elizabeth A. Tryon (Editor)
ISBN: 9781592139965
Publication Date: 2009-08-21
Service learning has become an institutionalized practice in higher education. Students are sent out to disadvantaged communities to paint, tutor, feed, and help organize communities. But while the students gain from their experiences, the contributors to The Unheard Voices ask, "Does the community?" This volume explores the impact of service learning on a community, and considers the unequal relationship between the community and the academy. Using eye-opening interviews with community-organization staff members, The Unheard Voices challenges assumptions about the effectiveness of service learning. Chapters offer strong critiques of service learning practices from the lack of adequate training and supervision, to problems of communication and issues of diversity. The book's conclusion offers ways to improve service learning so that future endeavors can be better at meeting the needs of the communities and the students who work in them.
Higher Education and Democracy by John Saltmarsh (Editor); Edward Zlotkowski (Editor)
ISBN: 9781439900390
Publication Date: 2011-01-28
Higher Education and Democracy is a collection of essays written over the last ten years on how civic engagement in higher education works to achieve what authors John Saltmarsh and Edward Zlotkowsi consider to be the academic and civic purposes of higher education. These include creating new modes of teaching and learning, fostering participation in American democracy, the development and respect for community and civic institutions, and encouraging the constant renewal all of these dimensions of American life. Organized chronologically, the twenty-two essays in this volume provide "signposts" along the road in the journey of fulfilling the civic purposes of higher education. For the authors, service-learning is positioned as centrally important to the primary academic systems and structures of higher education, departments, disciplines, curriculum, and programs that are central to the faculty domain. Progressing from the general and the contextual to specific practices embodied in ever larger academic units, the authors conclude with observations on the future of the civic engagement movement.
Rebuilding Community after Katrina by Ken Reardon (Editor); John Forester (Editor)
ISBN: 9781439911013
Publication Date: 2015-11-01
Rebuilding Community after Katrina chronicles the innovative and ambitious partnership between Cornell University's City and Regional Planning department and ACORN Housing, an affiliate of what was the nation's largest low-income community organization. These unlikely allies came together to begin to rebuild devastated neighborhoods in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The editors and contributors to this volume allow participants' voices to show how this partnership integrated careful, technical analysis with aggressive community outreach and organizing. With essays by activists, organizers, community members, and academics on the ground, Rebuilding Community after Katrina presents insights on the challenges involved in changing the way politicians and analysts imagined the future of New Orleans' Ninth Ward. What emerges from this complex drama are lessons about community planning, organizational relationships, and team building across multi-cultural lines. The accounts presented in Rebuilding Community after Katrina raise important and sensitive questions about the appropriate roles of outsiders in community-based planning processes.
Knowledge for Social Change by John Puckett; Matthew Hartley; Rita A. Hodges; Francis E. Johnston; Joann Weeks; Lee Benson; Ira Harkavy
ISBN: 9781439915202
Publication Date: 2017-07-01
Employing history, social theory, and a detailed contemporary case study, Knowledge for Social Change argues for fundamentally reshaping research universities to function as democratic, civic, and community-engaged institutions dedicated to advancing learning and knowledge for social change. The authors focus on significant contributions to learning made by Francis Bacon, Benjamin Franklin, Seth Low, Jane Addams, William Rainey Harper, and John Dewey--as well as their own work at Penn's Netter Center for Community Partnerships--to help create and sustain democratically-engaged colleges and universities for the public good. Knowledge for Social Change highlights university-assisted community schools to effect a thoroughgoing change of research universities that will contribute to more democratic schools, communities, and societies. The authors also call on democratic-minded academics to create and sustain a global movement dedicated to advancing learning for the "relief of man's estate"--an iconic phrase by Francis Bacon that emphasized the continued betterment of the human condition--and to realize Dewey's vision of an organic "Great Community" composed of participatory, democratic, collaborative, and interdependent societies.