Beyond the Measure Begins: What Service Means to Us

Beyond the Measure
Episode One: Taylor Morrison

In the first episode of Sam Houston State University's Beyond the Measure podcast, we meet our hosts: Dannie Moore, Vice President of Student Affairs and student Ileanna Reyes. In the launch of the episode, our hosts share what the university motto, “The measure of a Life is its Service,” means to them.
While on the topic of service, our hosts also welcome Taylor Morrison of SHSU’s Center for Community Engagement to the Bearkat pod lab. Morrison breaks down how and her peers coordinate hands-on experiences for students that produce real results for the local businesses and organizations they work with. The following lays out the discussion in a convenient Q&A format. For the full Beyond the Measure experience, watch the full episode below or on YouTube.

Can you tell us a little bit about the Center for Community Engagement? What's the mission?

To give you just a bit of background on how we came to be, the university was founded as a normal institute with the purpose of educating teachers for the state of Texas way back in the day and early origins. And that purpose has really followed through the work that the university has done over generations of students.

In 2010, our university was awarded the Carnegie Foundation's elective classification for a community-engaged campus as a result of the work that faculty, staff, and our students were doing. This really was a moment for us to say, "Wow, look, we really have been doing a lot of fantastic work connecting with the community, sharing resources and really motivating our students to live out that motto."

As a result of that, in 2012, the Center for Community Engagement was established. Our purpose is to maintain that elective classification, and to do that, we really function as a hub between campus and community connections. Anytime we hear from the community, hey, I'd really love to know more about this on campus or can you get me connected with so-and-so, the center really functions as the guide along the bridge between campus and community.  

Our office has a lot of programs, but the program that the community members are looking for may not be the one that we operate. That's part of what we do, we help hold their hand or walk them along the bridge and get them to the destination that they'd like to be at. We've got a lot of cool programs that we do both on the community side, faculty side and student side, but our general core mission is campus community collaborations.

For the people that might not know, what are ACE courses?

We have a lot of different programs, but in particular, the one that focuses directly on students is the academic community engagement course program. Academic Community Engagement (ACE) courses are formally designated on the course schedule and apply a teaching method where faculty design their course so that students are working directly with a community organization to apply what they're learning in the classroom to meet a community need or opportunity. It's for every student in the class, it's not optional. It gives students across disciplines and across campus a wide variety of opportunities to get connected and try out those skills that they're learning in the classroom before they get out into the real world.

We had in the last academic year over 650 ACE course sections across all colleges and they were taught by over 280 - almost 300 faculty - across campus. The impact is really great. We see students from all different disciplines getting these opportunities to really try out their skills, see if this was really a good fit for them, but also to get connected to the community and live out that motto. They’re also learning how to navigate the challenges and experiences of working with a real client or organization for their projects.

What's the feedback been like? What are students saying about participating ACE courses?

It’s 600 course sections, so in terms of total course enrollment, it's over 13,000 students. So the enrollment is pretty fantastic in terms of the breadth of students that are able to participate in ACE courses.

To give just a bit more on like what an ACE course is and to then be able to answer your question, faculty and a community partner work together to co-create a project that is applying what the students should be learning and also addressing whatever it is the organization's goal is. In the process of doing that, the community partner typically serves a role as a co-educator with the faculty. They bring a really unique set of skills and knowledge from their field or from their experiences working in an industry that supplements and complements the in-course instruction that a faculty member is delivering through their lectures, assignments and textbook readings.

Through that process, we've come up with a project that the students will do. It can be a direct project, or it could be an indirect project. What I mean by that is an indirect service or indirect engagement project, you might think of like boots on the ground, students going out to an organization and doing something with a community partner. Typically, that might look like working with school children perhaps through the Boys and Girls Club. Or, it might look like a really cool drones class that we have that I'm really excited about, where students in an agriculture and industry drones application course are learning how to do this 3D modeling, and so they have to develop a pre-flight plan, they have to execute the plan and then create the 3D modeling that happens after that. What a perfect opportunity to apply what they're learning. It could be a hypothetical situation, sure, but they actually worked with local farmers last year to do drone flights over their different structures on their farms to assess roofs. It gave feedback directly to an individual that the student worked with, that's a direct project where they're working specifically with an individual or group of people.

Then there’s indirect service or indirect community engagement. These are courses where the students are often working with organizational leaders, staff, business owners and in those projects the students are working more behind the scenes. So they might be identifying some kind of resource guide, some kind of tool or deliverable that the organization is looking for to really help them accomplish their mission or achieve a certain goal. So those are more behind the scenes. An example of that might be a human resource management course that worked most recently with a children's school and they actually worked directly with the schools, the head of the schools and they were identifying opportunities for staffing development and staffing improvement plans. It was applying what the students were learning in this class directly with the leader of the organization, but it wasn't working directly with the individuals like the staff or the teachers.

They're getting that applied experience, creating some kind of product, getting feedback on that product and going, "Hey, you maybe need to do a little more work here" or get that real, critical input to help them think through challenges that they're facing. It takes all different kinds of forms. Like I said, it's in all different colleges. We've got students in immersion classes, we've got them online, they're at The Woodland Center. We even have faculty-led study abroad courses that are ACE courses.

It spans everything from core curriculum, all the way up to doctoral courses. It’s a really cool program and it impacts a lot of students. To kind of answer your question, give circle way back around here, but in order to answer your question, I need to give you a little more context. What is some student feedback that we're hearing? One of the really cool parts of my job is that I get to do the assessment on ACE course experiences. In particular, the benefits that students perceive with these academic community engagement courses, and that's a survey and then also a reflection at the end. I think one of the more rewarding parts of my job is to be able to read those reflections and see what students are really taking away from these courses.

The different kinds of feedback we get first are personal. Students are realizing this is exactly what they wanted to do for their career or  this is not at all what they want to do for their career, and “what might they do now that they know that they're glad they tried it out but it really was not a good fit for them?” That's totally okay, that's the whole point. They're learning, but then also students are getting these experiences where they're trying to develop career readiness competencies, and we know those are so important whenever you graduate. You need to do really well at teamwork, you need to have professionalism, communication and an understanding of the different technologies that you'll need to be able to apply what you've learned in a professional setting.

The students are actually making those connections in those reflections and that's so rewarding to see that they understand that “this experience, while I didn't get paid for it, it wasn't a job, I can actually put this in my professional experience section on my resume. I can talk about this in the same way that I might have talked about an internship, but I couldn't take an internship because I work or I have these other responsibilities.”

Thinking about how this is a way that our students live out the motto, they are understanding their role in society, the ways that they can make a difference, the needs and opportunities that are out there and that they can find what their niche might be. Going off of what you said earlier, the really nice thing about this on the student-faculty side is that they're building relationships. They're getting these opportunities to learn more about their faculty member, their teachers, learn the different perspectives they're coming from and build some solid relationships that might lead to research opportunities. It could also be a letter of recommendation for professional or future additional academic experience. They're building relationships with their faculty and then with the individuals that they're working with.

One of the nice things that I enjoy reading is how the students recognize the value of the knowledge and wisdom that the organizational partners are bringing to this. They're so grateful to learn that they never knew this was a challenge and they wouldn't have known it if they hadn't worked with this organization and they didn't feel the passion from the staff who are teaching them about the challenges that they specifically face in these settings.

On a greater community level, it is extremely rewarding to see students identify that they have a place in a community. A lot of our students are far from home and they don't have a support network outside of what they get on campus. For them to build connections, build relationships, start to learn more about the local community and feel comfortable, like this is a second home for them, that's really rewarding to see. From a personal all the way to a community level perspective, our students are really seeing how they fit in through their ACE course experiences.

It's so nice that they're able to really find a way to go, that there are things outside the walls of campus and they can be really wonderful and great for them to feel supported. As we always talk about student success, one of the main keys to success and retention is that they feel like they belong. That's not just our campus community, that's also our local community as well.

What kind of impact have you seen with the partnerships?

I am from Huntsville. I grew up here. I moved off for college and graduate school just like you did one day and made my way back here eventually. One of the reasons why I feel so called to do this work is that I always wanted to come back to Huntsville to use what I've learned to make a difference. I didn't know what that was going to be and what that might look like. I was fortunate to fall into this opportunity where I'm able to work directly with community organizations, many of whom I grew up volunteering at, to find ways that we can help them support and achieve their missions through connections with campus. In doing that, I get the opportunity to talk to partners all the time.

On an organizational level, as we know, a lot of nonprofits are limited in terms of their resources and staffing. Budgets as well are challenging, especially whenever you have to rely on local fundraising efforts. ACE courses really provide an opportunity for these organizations to access something that they wouldn't otherwise have. That's true for nonprofits, but it's also true for our small businesses and governmental entities that we work with as well. The students function as an additional resource to the organization itself. In addition to that, the individual staff at the organization that the students work with, whether that's the organizational leader or it's the day-to-day people that they're in contact with, find students so energizing and motivating that they are feeling some kind of renewed passion for the work that they do when they see the fresh perspective that students can bring to the table. It really kind of reminds them this is why they got into this. So on an individual level, we also see that.

Then in terms of the organizational staff individuals themselves. For example, kids who are a part of a partnership that might be a mentoring project or some kind of educational program that's run through the public library, for example. Children see themselves in the college students that are there in front of them, and they may realize the life challenges and experiences that they’ve had are reflected in front of them in a college student. They didn't know that was a possibility for them, but to be able to see and relate to college students there presents a possibility they can start to believe in some kind of possibility for themselves. Our students are these flag wavers and banners for our university of genuinely living out the motto in real time and transforming these lives in the moment, but also later on too if they decide to come to Sam or not and do other wonderful things, but it’d be great if they did.

Then on a community level, like I mentioned, I'm local, so I see people at HEB that are partners. I see the faculty members at church, it's the ability to see these connections and relationships strengthen over time through the different ways that we're able to plug in. Whether that's through us and ACE courses or the variety of different student organizations that do volunteerism and Greek life that also plays a role in that as well. There are so many different pieces of the university that are interacting with and touching the community in a way that highlights the benefits and beauty of both sides. So the community impacts or the partner level impacts really are spread quite wide. Our partners feel really valued, that they have knowledge and wisdom that they can impart on students and play an active role in students’ learning process and experience. It's really rewarding work. I really love what I do.