Brandon Youker on Community-Based Learning

Dr. Brandon Youker, Associate Professor School of Social Work, discusses Community-Based Learning on Shelley Irwin's WGVU Morning Show,  2 May 2016. The following is an excerpt:

“Community-based learning is just the idea that universities partner with the community in which they reside; and in my case, community-based organizations partner with my students in a relationship of reciprocity, or mutual benefit… each gets something out of the relationship. So, for example, I teach a class, and this evaluation class for graduate students goes and kind of adopts a community organization and then we conduct evaluations of the organization’s programs and write reports.

“The students I think they get the real world hands-on experiences by working with real community partners, working with real issues in a real context. And also, then there are real consequences for not only the students but, of course, for the organizations that we work with. So I think that’s a really big motivator for the students to see that the work they are doing is impacting a particular organization that serves a particular population.

“The partners also receive benefit, and hopefully, that is, we conduct these quality evaluations and we give them reports, and we make recommendations, and we present our findings to the board, staff members, managers, administrators, and, of course, some of their consumers as well. And so, not only do they get, hopefully, high quality evaluation, but they also get an opportunity to think more deeply about their programs, help articulate those programs a little bit better sometimes, as well as find areas for possible improvement.”