Previous Service-Learning Course Development Grant Award Recipients

2016 Awards

Nita Eskew – Chemistry
The Chemistry of Purslane
This course will engage students in the search of purslane (Portulaca oleracea), an edible, medicinal plant. While strengthening their scientific skills, students will develop a deeper understanding of chemistry and its impact on society.

Christi Hurt – Women’s and Gender Studies
Leadership and Violence Prevention
This course is an examination of interpersonal violence, the factors that enable it, and prevention strategies. This will be of particular interest to students who want a better understanding of how to work in peer groups and communities to end the cycle of violence. We will examine violence on both individual and structural levels, considering perpetrators, victims/survivors and bystanders.

Rachel Schaevitz – Communication
Production and Practice of Media in the Public Service
Students will form four to five-person crews, choose from among a selection of University and community partners as their “client” and devote the remainder of the semester to producing a single, polished media project designed to educate the public on a particular topic. Examples might include a seven to 10-minute video that helps K-12 teachers understand and teach a contemporary issue being researched in a department on campus, or a 10-minute documentary that explains the goals and collaborative efforts of UNC with a local nonprofit organization. In this course, media production students hone their technical skills in a way that actively creates enhanced connections between students and their community and encourages students to explore ways that media in the public service can enhance their own learning, educate others and contribute to positive social.

Stephanie Kiser – Pharmacy
Rural Pharmacy Health – Outreach and Screenings for Rural Western North Carolinians
This course offers Rural Pharmacy Health Certificate participants a service learning experience for practical application of key concepts of the Certificate program. The course will focus on the development, implementation and post-reflections for community outreach and screenings for rural residents in western North Carolina. Students will explore the cultural engagement needed to increase rural residents’ participation and awareness related to preventive screenings and health improvement.

Rhonda Lanning – Nursing
Women’s Health Issues in Haiti
This global health service-learning course experience will increase understanding of international women’s health issues with a specific focus on Haiti. An interdisciplinary group of students will be offered a semester-long seminar style elective including an experiential global health service-learning opportunity. This spring break service trip will include travel to Haiti in partnership with Family Health Ministries. Students will be encouraged to subsequently enroll in global health elective N489 and return to Haiti for a four-week period over the following summer to continue service and learning in Haiti.

Suzanne Gulledge – Education
Introduction to Teaching at the Middle Level
This APPLES service-learning course is for any students interested to explore teaching or gain experience working in a school setting with young adolescent learners and is a required course for those who seek the North Carolina license for middle grades level teaching. Service-learning in a weekly school-based practicum is coupled with a course that contextualizes the experiential practicum within scholarly studies. After being trained as AVID tutors, students will work in schools and attend a university class session each week. Three academic credit-hours are earned through the combination of weekly course meetings, completion of reading and writing assignments and assessments, and weekly service-learning.

Anne Agbe-Davies – Anthropology
Public Archaeology Practicum
Anthropology has a long history as an applied discipline, producing insights that are useful in the world as well as in the academy. This course explores that dimension of the discipline through seminar discussions and the completion of an applied group project. Members of this class will use their anthropological and archaeological training to further the goals of a collaborating community.

2015 Awards

Jessica Amsbary, Sallie Nowell, Tara Regan – Allied Health Sciences and Education
Autism in our Communities, an Interdisciplinary Perspective
This course is designed to introduce undergraduate students to the diverse topics related to the autism spectrum disorder. Topics covered include: diagnostic criteria, evidence-based treatment methods, issues affecting parents and siblings, multi-cultural issues and transition to adulthood.

Geoff Bell – Environment and Ecology
Conservation in Theory and Practice
This course will be designed to attract undergraduates who are interested in environmental issues. Students will learn about important ecological science underlying conversation, how ecological theory is used to conserve and restore ecosystems, as well as the tools and techniques professionals use to manage natural resources. Students in this course will engage in a week-long immersive field experience with a community partner.

Jean Davison – Nursing
Healthcare in the Global Context: Migrant Latino Health
This course offers a global health service-learning experience to increase understanding of migrant Latino health issues, with a focus on migrant children. Students will be offered a domestic, experiential service-learning opportunity within agencies in North Carolina that provide and facilitate health services to migrant Latino children and families.

Marsha Penner – Psychology
Special Topics in Neuroscience
This course explores the links between molecules, cells, systems and behavior. The focus will be neuroscience outreach, comparative neuroanatomy, human neuropathologies, electrical properties of neurons, synaptic physiology, and sensory and motor system function.

Amy Weil – Medicine
Intensive Integration Course Online
Students will explore sensitive issues relating to the transition to the clinical world. Students will reflect on both personal and patient experiences, identify and work through ethical dilemmas, continue development of clinical skills and strengthen abilities to work as individuals, with patients and colleagues to provide excellent care.

Marie Weil – Social Work
Community-led Sustainable Development
This course addresses issues relevant to grassroots organizations working in low-wealth communities engaging in sustainable development of land and revitalization of cultural and civic institutions. The course is designed to examine the triple bottom line – sustainable economic development, social justice and environmental stewardship. Students will explore processes of engagement with communities, including: issues of power and practices of planning, development, financing, management and evaluation.

2013 Awards

Harriet Able, School of Education
Families, Schools and Communities

Cate Brubaker, Global Studies
Intercultural Education in K-12 Classrooms

Mimi Chapman, School of Social Work
Images in Action: Using Visual Means to Create Change for New Immigrant Youth and Families

Mark Dorosin, School of Law
Organizing and Research Methods for Excluded Communities

Pierce Freelon, Music
Beat Making Lab

Michal Ostwerweil, Global Studies
Paradigms of Social Change/Paradigms of Development: Community Development Projects and Social Justice

Nadia Yaqub, Asian Studies
Borders and Walls in the Arab World

2012 Awards

Michael Burroughs, Visiting Lecturer, Department of Philosophy
Philosophy 592-Pre-College Philosophy (Philosophy in High Schools)

Amy Burtaine, Program Coordinator, Department of Communication Studies
COMM 390 Performing Sexual Health (UNC Sex-Ed Squad)

Kevin Chovanec, Instructor, Department of English and Comparative Literature
ENGL 105 APPLES Writing and Composition: Literacy Pedagogy in the Field

Sarah Hatcher, Instructor, Institute for the Environment
ENVR 296 Environmental Justice and Community-based Participatory Research

Rhonda Lanning, Clinical Instructor, School of Nursing
Service to the Childbearing Family

Leslie McAbee, Instructor, Department of English and Comparative Literature
ENGL 105 APPLES Writing and Composition: Literacy Pedagogy in the Field

Rachel Seidman, Associate Director, Study of the American South
Women’s Activism in U.S. History and Today

Jordan Radke, Instructor, Department of Sociology
SOCI 397

2011 Awards

Alice Ammerman, Director of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Department of Nutrition and the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
NUTR 696-041 Sustainable Local Food Systems-Intersection of Local Foods and Public Health

Geoff Bell, Lecturer, Institute for the Environment
ENST 490 Restoration Ecology

Molly Creel, Instructor, School of Government
PUBA 401 Public Service Theory and Practice

Brian Hogan, Research Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry
CHEM 430H Biochemistry-APPLES

Scott Kirsch, Associate Professor, Department of Geography
GEOG 650 Technology and Democracy

Kari Kozlowski, Teaching Assistant, Department of Sociology
SOCI 423 Sociology of Education

Jennifer Miller, Graduate Assistant, Department of Public Policy
PLCY 399 Public Policy in the Workplace

Tessa Nicholas, Lecturer, Department of Computer Science
COMP 380 Computers and Society