Service Year + Higher Ed Innovation Challenge

Imagen de Mónica Ivelisse Feliú-Mójer

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Viernes, 6 marzo 2015

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR IMPACT EDUCATION

Americans from all sectors are emerging behind a big idea -- that a "service year" becomes a common expectation and opportunity for 18-28 year olds and a path to completing college and finding employment.  Although some progress has been made in providing such service opportunities through programs like AmeriCorps, VISTA, Peace Corps and nonprofit organizations, a national service alliance that includes the Franklin Project at The Aspen Institute and the National Conference on Citizenship are working to expand such opportunities.  A new technology platform called the Service Year Exchange (SYx) will enable young people to find service year opportunities, nonprofits and colleges to post such opportunities, and institutions to fund the small living stipend to make such service possible.  For more information on this overall initiative, please visit YouServe.org.

Higher education has a long tradition of advancing service opportunities for its students through service-learning, Federal Work Study, semester and summers of service, giving students deferrals or gap years to do a year of national service, and more.  Higher education is innovating around this big idea of creating more opportunities for students to do a service year before, during or after college.  NCoC and the Franklin Project, together with generous grant support from the Lumina Foundation, want to spark innovation across the system to explore the best ideas for how a service year can link to learning, translate into course credit, and help students find their callings and increase their likelihood to finish college.  The Service Year + Higher Education: Innovation Challenge will advance this work.

join the challenge

The Franklin Project at the Aspen Institute and the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) are welcoming all education institutions to participate in a competition running from January - April 2015. Each university or college entrant will compete for a prize to support the planning and creation of new education-affiliated service year positions. Building on the promise of before college or after graduation structures from early adopters, the competition seeks to gain further innovation on integrating learning and service during the college experience itself.

This prize pool will be spread across three categories -- community colleges, public institutions, and private institutions -- with each category winner receiving $30,000. There will be an opportunity to win an additional $10,000 for an Audience Choice award.

To be eligible, institutions must design a service year program that will result in academic credit, meet Service Year exchange certification criteria, designed for sustainability, have the support of the institution’s leadership, and provide a model for other similar post-secondary institutions.

Finalists will be invited to present their program concepts in person to a panel of judges, including potential funders, during an all-day event in Washington, D.C.

 

SERVICE YEAR + HIGHER EDUCATION

The Franklin Project and NCoC believe that the incorporation of service years into the post-secondary experience will lead to increased degree attainment and employment in students’ fields of interest, as well as more highly engaged citizens in the long-term. While promising models for higher education-sponsored service years, either before the first year or after graduation, are being piloted, we are looking for models that make a service year a part of the undergraduate experience. Such an experience could occur during a “junior year away” (or on campus), a capstone final year experience, or programs that incorporate both summer and school year elements. Ideally, programs would be connected to academic learning. For example, communications students might serve in local nonprofit organizations, those studying child development might serve in local child care centers, language majors or students in ethnic studies fields might serve in immigrant communities, or others preparing for health-related careers would serve in local clinics.

 

For more information: http://www.sychallenge.org/

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