Keeping Up the "Pace," CU Instructor Leads Students in Service
From broken families to sexual abuse, her classes focus on some of society’s most challenging problems. But for Lori Pace, one of Concord University Beckley Center’s sociology instructors, her study of these issues went beyond the textbook and into the community.
Pace has included service-learning opportunities in many of her courses for a long while, but her efforts were catalyzed by the terrorist attacks that hit the United States on September 11, 2001.
“The week after [the attacks] we went back into class and we were just all so devastated and we didn’t know what to do,” Pace said. “But we wanted to do something.”
Students and Pace got together and decided to host a community bazaar as a charity fundraiser.
On weekends, Pace and her students got together and made crafts for the bazaar. The students also donated baked goods and yard sale items. More than $1,000 was donated by the class to a local women’s shelter and over $700 to the United Way 9/11 response fund.
This spirit of service continued on in nearly all of Pace’s courses. But, most of all, the service experiences tie in to both the class work and what community leaders shared with her students.
In a criminology course, the class involved community speakers on the topic of sexual assault crimes. Through those speakers, the class learned that a common problem for the victims of
sexual assault is that they must forfeit their clothing as part of the assault investigation. Often then, victims of sexual assault are forced to leave the hospital in nothing more than a medical gown.
After learning of this problem, the students decided to create packets for the victims of sexual
assault that included a change of clothes and made those available to local emergency rooms. In all, nearly 100 packets were made.
The service-learning project also introduced them to the different issues that arise in dealing with victims of crime, when they realized the diversity of victims of sexual assault and the need to produce clothing packages for children and teenagers of both genders.
In a course about marriage and families the students learned about the issues surrounding
foster care and the fact that many children do not have the opportunity to bring many of their personal belongings with them to their new foster homes. The class then made backpacks with stuffed animals, hygiene products, toys, and donated them to the children through the Greenbrier County Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR). In all, the students
and Pace made 110 backpacks.
In another criminology course, students promoted a local child advocacy organization, Just for Kids, at a community Halloween event. The students labeled and handed out candy to trick-or-treating children and shared information with parents about the organization.
In addition, students in her other classes held a bake sale fundraiser for Just for Kids at the Erma Byrd Higher Education Center. Other projects in recent years have included similar fundraisers and food drives for the Salvation Army.
Pace said that these service-learning experiences have enhanced the learning experience of her sociology students.
Most of all, she said it has brought them together as a team for their own communities.
“This is their community, and this is their family,” Pace said. “The students really had a heart for service."
According to Pace, the students enjoy meeting community leaders and are introduced to different ideas of what they can do once they earn their Concord University degree.
“They’re not going to remember all my boring, you know, Charlie Brown teacher’s lectures…but they’ll, years from now, remember that they participated in this,” Pace concluded.
Labels: beckley center, service learning, sociology
posted by Jesse Call @ 12:16 AM
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