Students develop a better sense of self when interacting with others.

Spring 2009

The Honors 214, “Social Change by Design” class embarked on a journey for exploring social issues and creating a website for the Service Learning program here at Stevenson University. As a team we integrated real life experiences in the community with our social and technical skills in the classroom.

We started out by brainstorming the structure and content of the website and with input from Ms. Tufares, our liaison with Service Learning. One of our first assignments was to find an social organization that we wanted to know more about, research that social issue, and present our findings to the class.

By midterm each student presented his or her version of the website. We critiqued each others’ work and each of us were assigned different aspects of the website to work on, and then we designed this website. 

With Kayla Tufares’ help we visited the organization of our choice, conducted interviews and wrote our reflections (see our blogs for details). 

All the organizations we interviewed at are now participants in our Service Learning program.

Dr. Lombardi’s knowledge of social issues and “inconvenient facts” really pushed our boundaries and invited us to experience social change first hand.

Professor AMR’s knowledge of the programming, website development and design skills was monumental in helping us bring our ideas to fruition.

Not only did we bring a website to life, but we learned about teamwork, social issues, social organizations, website design and implementation.

Check out our website and let us know what you think — and check out Service Learning it can change your life and your learning. 

Students: Dustin Summers, Jennifer  Sauers, Emily Ames, Brooke Szydlowski, Caitlyn Wrinkle, Nicole Caprio, Tabatha Surma and Lyuba Sidorova.

Faculty: Judy Lombardi, Kannan AMR, with special thanks to Kayla Tufares, our coach.