Service-Learning Honors for Faculty, Students, Special Projects
The annual SSU Service-Learning Awards Ceremony was held at a spring luncheon in the Cooperage. The following students, faculty, and community partners were recognized for their outstanding service:
Outstanding S-L Students
Brace Hartwell, Stephen Thom, Annie Cecil, Ryan
Nelson, Heidi Schweitzer, Hayley Shelstad, Stephanie Scheuber all from
Elaine McHugh's (KIN) Saturday Sidekick Program.
Outstanding S-L Project
The Collaborative Autism Training and Support Program
of Dr. Lorna Catford (PSYCH). This program addresses the fastest growing
developmental disability in CA today. Funded by a grant from the CA State
Department of Developmental Services, the program is a joint effort sponsored
by North Bay Regional Center and SSU Psychology Department, in collaboration
with Sonoma County Office of Education and several local service provider
agencies. Two students from Catford’s Psych 490 were honored for
their exceptional service to this project: Ashley Hansen and Taylor Appell.
Outstanding S-L Community Partner
Rhoda Wolfson of the Petaluma Senior
Center was honored for her enthusiastic and passionate partnering with
the “Connections across Generations” service-learning
project of Dr. Madeleine Rose’s (SOCI) classes.
Outstanding AmeriCorps Promise Fellow
Serene Cooper (WGS alum) was recognized
for her energetic work at St. Joseph Health System’s Circle of Sisters
where she developed a Community Liaison position that strengthened the
links between SSU, the community, and this nonprofit agency.
Outstanding Community Scholars
Bene Rather-Taylor, Chelsea Bahr, Donald
Williams, Karen Shimizu, Wesley Wills were honored as SSU’s first
Community Scholars. These students researched topics on housing, HIV/AIDS,
Transportation, Mental Illness, and Gender Issues within Sonoma County.
S-L Founders Award
Dr. Albert L. Wahrhaftig, Professor Emeritus, Anthropology.
A pioneer of service-learning, Dr. Wahrhaftig taught anthropological field
methods in the field, not the classroom, and he insisted that the end result
of student learning should be both scholarly merit and practical applicability.
He served on the Oakcrest Project, a psychiatric facility, conducting an
anthropological study and directing students in participant observation
and interviewing of staff and patients in response to request from facility
staff; he initiated “Research and Community Teaching on Southeast
Asian Refugees in Sonoma County” where students sketched the distinctive
cultural patterns of the various new refugee communities; he developed
a course, "Preventing Homelessness" , in which students worked
directly with the homeless community in a variety of ways; and he collaborated
with Burbank Housing Development Corporation in Antho 441, Ethnographic
Field Methods, in which students worked with Burbank staff on projects
about low cost and affordable housing. Dr. Wahrhaftig’s legacy continues
on today in the SSU Anthropology Department.
Campus-Community Connections
The Office of Community-Based Learning also hosted a Campus and Community Connections Workshop in May. Facilitators Jerry Eisman, CSU Service-Learning Faculty Scholar, and Elizabeth Sills, Community Benefits and Community Health Manager at Kaiser Permanente San Jose, led the group in exploring service-learning pedagogy and designing service-learning projects.
Faculty represented the departments of Anthropology, Mathematics, Business Administration, Education, Chicano and Latino Studies, and Biology. Community partners present were Habitat for Humanity, Listening for a Change, the Jewish Free Clinic, Sonoma County Human Resources Department, Committee on the Shelterless, Circle of Sisters, Bay Organization’s STRAW Project, and Face to Face.