Community Working Classics, program in which Grand Valley students take the humanities into an area prison, rehab center, and job training agency, has won state recognition for its success in linking classroom learning to hands-on work in the community.
Michael DeWilde, GVSU philosophy professor and founder of the program, will be honored with the Michigan Campus Compact Faculty Service Learning Award at a ceremony in Ypsilanti on February 8. The MCC is a coalition of Michigan universities and colleges promoting community service in higher education.
DeWilde has been offering the Community Working Classics program since 1999. Students in the three-credit class, mostly juniors and seniors from a variety of academic disciplines, spend a few weeks developing the courses they will teach in such subjects as ethics, literature, philosophy, history, and music. They then go out into the community to market their programs to agency directors and, ultimately, conduct classes and discussions. This year the CWC is offering classes to inmates at the Muskegon Correctional Facility, students at Grand Rapids Job Corps, and residents at Project Rehab in Grand Rapids.
The final few weeks of the semester are spent writing an essay on the experience, which often has had a profound effect on them.
They feel a sense of urgency about the work they're doing that they don't always feel in a regular classroom, said DeWilde. They have to stop thinking about themselves as students and start thinking about themselves as teachers. They rise to the challenge and really grow from this experience.
The program fulfills several objectives, DeWilde said: it introduces students to community organizing, gives them an opportunity to test what they're learning, and offers educational services to people who have bypassed traditional learning opportunities.
The highest goal is to have both Grand Valley students and the community students and inmates be better, more informed citizens and act as full participants in their community, he said.
The CWC program is organized under the auspices of the GVSU Philosophy Department and funded by GVSU's Johnson Center for Philanthropy.
