FEATURE
At Your Service
By Julia Halprin Jackson
San José State University’s well-established tradition of community engagement encourages Spartans to seek service learning opportunities that not only contribute to their academic and professional development, but also enrich their lives and offer needs-based support to fellow San Joseans.
Jose Luiz Sarabia Torres, ’24 Mechanical Engineering, and president of the SJSU chapter of the Society of Latino Engineers and Scientists (SOLES), is a member of a unique cohort: those who graduated from high school during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, amidst widespread civic unrest following the police murder of George Floyd and in the months leading up to a climactic presidential election. A first-generation college student, he started San José State that fall online, and in time grew hungry for a sense of community.
At the same time, Sarabia Torres acknowledged that people in his community grappled with education inequity, as many individuals are learning English as a second language. Growing up, he could not rely on his parents' academic guidance because they had only a third grade education from back in Mexico. Stuck completing his coursework online at home, he longed to give back to his community and increase the number of Latinos pursuing college degrees.
In 2022, he applied to participate in a paid opportunity that directly supported his hometown of Redwood City while pursuing his degree at San José State: the Californians for All College Corps. Every week, he and other fellows taught programming concepts to fifth and sixth graders at Sherman Oaks Elementary School in San José. In addition, he volunteered 180 hours with Second Harvest Food Bank of Silicon Valley, distributing fresh food to families across his community. He dedicated an extra 270 hours to developing kits with a diverse group of fellows and spending time with the kids at Sherman Oaks. The experiences awakened a call to service in him that runs parallel to his career goals of advocating for Latino success in STEM.
“I believe that service learning opportunities are beneficial to students because they offer the chance to give back to the community in ways that they probably wouldn’t have if they didn’t participate in programs like College Corps,” he says.
“They also give college students the opportunity to get a perspective on the real world. They’re always focused on academics, textbooks, exams — but they rarely put themselves out there and see life beyond the classroom. It opens their eyes to see what it’s like in another individual’s shoes, whether that includes struggling with food insecurity or a language barrier that prevents some families from helping their students succeed academically.”
“I believe that service learning opportunities are beneficial to students because they offer the chance to give back to the community in ways that they probably wouldn’t have if they didn’t participate in programs like College Corps.”
— Jose Luiz Sarabia Torres
The world as a classroom
College Corps originated as the Civic Action Fellowship, a state-supported program that offers $10,000 to undergraduates to complete 450 hours of community service in an academic year. Though San José State was selected as one of eight California universities to pilot the fellowship in 2020, the university’s longstanding commitment to service learning predates the pandemic by decades.
In 1999, California Governor Gray Davis called for a community service requirement for all students enrolled in the state’s public institutions of higher education. The goal of these initiatives was to encourage students to contribute to their communities and establish an ethic of service. San José State University’s Center for Community Learning and Leadership (CCLL) emerged from this call in 2000, armed with the mission to support curricular service learning and engagement experiences on and off campus.
“Our mission at the university is to develop the next generation of people who can participate effectively in a democracy and maintain a just society,” says Psychology Professor Elena Klaw, who serves as CCLL director. Her office offers the umbrella that houses College Corps, as well as Veterans Embracing Transition (VET) Connect, Students Demand Action and a number of other projects focused on curricular community learning.
The center defines service learning and community engagement as strategies that promote student learning through active participation in meaningful service related to course objectives. In addition to supporting fellowship recipients like Sarabia Torres, CCLL staff collaborate with faculty members in all nine of SJSU’s colleges to incorporate service into their curriculum.
Elena Klaw (left), Ian Chavez, '24 Computer Science, and Andrea Tully welcome College Corps Fellows at a special campus event. Photo by Robert C. Bain.
Learning through service is exponential, Klaw says. The center offers grants to support faculty members as they develop teaching strategies, encouraging students to consider the real-world applications of their studies as they complete community-engaged work outside the classroom. She and Assistant Director Andrea Tully hope programs like College Corps can serve as a model, not only at San José State, but at universities worldwide.
To better explore how community engagement develops students’ sense of civic responsibility, Klaw and Tully partnered with Elaine Ikeda, executive director of LEAD California, to edit “Reframing Community Engagement in Higher Education” (Routledge 2024). The book includes chapters by Klaw and Tully, as well as fellow SJSU faculty members Ellen Middaugh and Mark Felton and alumnus Henry Fan, and a chapter by Josh Fryday, California’s chief service officer and director of California Volunteers.
“Preparing students to be civically engaged means there’s a possibility of a better future in which our students will address intractable, complicated social issues [like poverty or institutionalized racism],” says Klaw. “They will have the emotional investment and the tools, the critical analysis and the skills to work on social problems. Their work goes beyond direct service, and I’d argue beyond career preparedness, too. We want students who can and will create a better world.”
Katherine Cushing
Establishing sustainable relationships
There are many ways to encourage service, says SJSU Environmental Studies Department Chair Katherine Cushing. Cushing serves as a senior advisor for CommUniverCity, a unique organization that brings together San José State, the City of San José and Central San José communities.
Similar to the CCLL, CommUniverCity emphasizes that service can and often should exceed educational or professional requirements. Both programs tap into already-existing talent or potential in SJSU faculty, staff and students to best situate Spartans as changemakers in their communities. While the CCLL stems from California State University’s Chancellor’s Office and provides training for faculty, students and staff, CommUniverCity is a three-sector partnership encompassing the local community, university and local government to implement community-engaged learning projects based on resident-identified needs.
Cushing describes the organization as an interconnected web of partnerships connecting SJSU to the city and neighboring communities.
“We have probably hundreds, if not thousands, of CommUniverCitans — faculty members or students who have worked on community engaged learning projects, or one of the thousands of residents we interact with every year, like school principals, city staff or elected officials,” she says. “We really believe in our shared goals. We want to bring the very best of San José State faculty expertise and students together to work on community-identified needs.”
CommUniverCity engages between 500-1,700 SJSU students in service learning projects throughout the year. Photo by Robert C. Bain.
CommUniverCity Executive Director Michael Oye, who also lectures in SJSU’s Chemical and Materials Engineering Department, explains that the organization’s mission prioritizes projects as defined by community members.
Where other organizations might adopt what he calls a “push-out mentality,” in which outside consultants impose a vision of what they think a neighborhood needs, Oye says CommUniverCity begins its projects through an asset-based assessment with residents to determine growth opportunities, while leveraging the people-power of SJSU faculty and students to address these needs.
Cushing adds that CommUniverCity focuses on three pillars: promoting a college-going culture, supporting neighborhood infrastructure and addressing public health and the environment. Each semester, CommUniverCity hires SJSU students as project coordinators who act as liaisons between the university and each project site. Some projects are ongoing partnerships between faculty members and local K-12 schools that occur throughout the year, while others might be annual events.
“My work at CommUniverCity through the Growing Sustainably Program kickstarted my passion for teaching and learning with youth and families,” says Matthew Mangoni, ’24 MS Environmental Studies, who serves as the coordinator of the Associated Students Campus Community Garden. “Through interacting and serving this community, I learned so much about what I want to do with my career. My time at CommUniverCity directly influenced my current master’s research as well as prepared me for the full-time position I currently have at the AS Campus Community Garden at SJSU.”
This typically results in mutually beneficial relationships across campus, historically underserved communities like Five Wounds/Brookwood Terrace and the South University Neighborhood — areas that, according to CommUniverCity’s 2020–2021 annual report, are home to approximately 10% of city residents, of which 52% identify as Hispanic and 45% are foreign-born. Each year, CommUniverCity works with anywhere from 500 to 1,700 SJSU students and more than 5,000 residents.
Another such example is the Community Leadership Program (CLP), a seven-week participatory action research project led by Environmental Studies Assistant Professor Carolina Prado that prepared Spanish-speaking residents to serve as neighborhood ambassadors. Programs like these demonstrate how service multiplies — when faculty members share their expertise with students, who in turn support residents, they enable communities to create sustainable visions for the future.
Michael Oye
Associated Students Campus Community Garden. Photo by Kristen Wonder.
CommUniverCity celebrated its 15th anniversary with a "quinceñera" at San José State. Photo by Brandon Chew.
College Corps fellows participate in ongoing trainings through the Center for Community Learning and Leadership. Photo by Robert C. Bain.
Iris Schmidt
Instilling an ethic of service
In addition to programs offered through the Center for Community Learning and Leadership and CommUniverCity, there are countless initiatives across SJSU that encourage students to serve beyond One Washington Square. Regardless of how and with whom they serve, data from multiple programs suggests that their experiences inspire ongoing commitments to service that continue long after they graduate.
Take, for example, College Corps alumna Iris Schmidt, ’23 Psychology. After COVID-19 interrupted her first year at SJSU, she returned to campus in 2021 ready for social connection and eager to take full advantage of her time in San José. The College Corps offered opportunities for her to connect with elementary students as a mentor and teacher while also volunteering at Martha’s Kitchen, a nonprofit food distribution center in Willow Glen, and dedicating her Saturdays to SJSU’s Campus Community Garden.
Schmidt juggled her service hours and teaching with an independent research project funded by an SJSU Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity grant and also served as the president of the campus chapter of Students Demand Action. Even as she took on additional responsibilities and prepared to graduate, volunteerism became an embedded part of her weekly routine.
“I feel obligated to serve my community and help others,” she reflects. “I have such privilege to have housing. I have the privilege to have meals three times a day. I have the privilege to receive higher education. I’ve been able to do all of this because of the resources I was provided when I was growing up.
“I think it’s my duty as someone who has benefited from those resources to give back and provide support to individuals growing up in the community that I live in now, because I wouldn’t be where I am now if not for all those who helped me when I was young. I want to be the person to give back — to help kids be as great as they can be by giving them more resources, encouragement and support, or to help with grocery distributions to ensure that folks can eat. If I can be a beam of light for someone, then I’d like to do so.”
Want to learn more?
Visit the Center for Community Learning and Leadership to learn more about ongoing service learning initiatives and opportunities.
Learn more about the book “Reframing Community Engagement in Higher Education.”
Top photo: Robert C. Bain
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