Approved Definition from Montclair State University Senate:

The Experiential Education Committee of the Faculty Senate proposed the following definition of service-learning which was approved by MSU's University Senate in May, 1998:

Service-learning is a course-based, credit bearing educational experience in which students participate in an organized community-based service activity. This activity meets identified community needs, and provides a student with sufficient time to reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain a greater understanding of course content and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility.

A Service-Learning course must:

• Be formally recognized by the University.


• Include a partnership approved by the University, among faculty members, students, a grassroots organization/community agency and service recipients, which addresses an identified community need.


• Emphasize a pedagogy that requires participants to critically reflect on a service-learning experience.


• Require students to actively participate in community-based projects that address identified community needs.


• Provide both clear and explicit learning outcomes for students. The course is structured to maximize the achievement of these outcomes for students, faculty, service-learning program staff, and agency supervisors.


• Integrate theory, practice, and social responsibility.


• Include a description of the responsibilities of each student, faculty, site supervisor, and community partner.


• Include training, supervision, support, recognition and evaluation by faculty and agency partners.


• Include a mechanism for participants to provide feedback on the service-learning experience.


• Provide for evaluation procedures to assess the impact of the Program.

Benefits of Service-Learning:

There are a number of perspectives one could take in order to evaluate the benefits of service-learning. Typically, we look variously at the benefits yielded by our students, our faculty and the community. While our faculty benefit generally by enhancing their scholarship, students benefit by building citizenship skills and experience, the community benefits by having a committed rotation of students and university knowledge and resources, there is a grand benefit that our entire society yields as service-learning continues to grow nationwide. When we work, as our mission states, to foster the development of informed and involved citizens through the integration of service to the community with academic course work, we are at once creating civic infrastructure through campus-community partnerships and teaching tomorrow’s leaders the invaluable skills of citizenship. Service-Learning is therefore an exercise in participatory democracy.

Benefits to Students:

The mission of the Service-Learning Program at MSU is aimed at our number one goal: to foster the development of informed and involved citizens through the integration of service to the community with academic course work. Commensurately, the Service-Learning program hopes to cultivate this student progress as its primary benefit to our students and to our greater society. We hope to achieve our goals with students by providing such benefits as:

• Opportunities to gain perspectives on democracy and civic engagement


• Fostering the transition from service-politics to traditional forms of political involvement, civic responsibility and activism


• Providing meaningful exposure to contemporary social issues


• Opportunities to “make a difference.” Students who participate in successful campus-community service partnerships will be more motivated to undertake such projects in the future, beyond their tenure as students of Montclair State University


• As a method of higher education, service-learning is an experiential learning tool that offers students the opportunity to connect their classroom learning to real world issues


• Resume and Vitae acknowledgement—As a culture of service and civic responsibility is advanced among employers, academia and public institutions, experience, not only with specific community service activities, but with service in general, becomes a marketable trait of graduating students.

Benefits to Faculty:

As stated in our program goals, Service-Learning works to benefit faculty by creating and supporting a soundly coordinated program support infrastructure and by supporting their scholarship, teaching and application in ways that support retention, promotion and tenure in the following ways:

• Provide support systems for faculty to create and offer academic courses that foster student learning through direct experience and reflection and that stimulates new insights on issues of public concern.
• Establish and sustain community partnerships that are based on reciprocity and rely on long-term commitments between the University and the community.
• Maintain a Service-Learning Scholars Program to insure that there is a cadre of faculty who have mastered the pedagogy and practices of service-learning.
• Offer training and developmental activities to meet the needs of students, faculty and community partners.
• Build an institutional infrastructure that supports faculty, community partners, and students.
• Maintain an efficient system of Program administration and risk management.
• Recognize and award student, faculty and partners who make a significant contribution to the campus and community.

In addition to fostering the development of leadership skills and a sense of civic responsibility in students, service-learning offers significant advantages to agencies. The major benefit of service-learning is to work in collaboration with others in order to achieve together what could not be achieved alone. Additional benefits of service-learning in the community include:

• Providing access to University resources (e.g., faculty and student talent and expertise, technology, etc.).


• Contributing to the quality of higher education by sharing knowledge and skills with students and faculty.


• Enhancing agency visibility through campus and community publication.


• Strengthening awareness and knowledge of community and University assets.


• Building interagency task forces and collaborations to address identified community needs.


• Establishing and sustain community partnerships that are based on reciprocity and rely on long-term commitments between the University and the community.


• Offering training and developmental activities to meet the needs of students, faculty and community partners.

To learn more about how other institutions of higher education define
service-learning and its benefits visit the links below.