Danielle Dionne, a senior at Sweet Briar College, says she was skeptical – at first – about how a volunteer service project her class had developed would work out. Dionne and her classmates had to take what they were learning in their “Multicultural Religious America” course and use it to meet a community need.

College religion, classics and history departments typically are not associated with service learning. That’s usually left to education and psychology, said Tim Loboschefski, associate professor of psychology and director of Sweet Briar’s new PACE program. PACE, an acronym for Promoting Academic and Community Engagement, aims to integrate volunteer activities into the academic curriculum in a way that benefits both the community and students. Danielle Dionne '07 (left)speaks with students from Elon Elementary School just outside the Slave Cabin.

Service-learning experiences are designed to foster deeper understanding of course content and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility. They are on the top end of what Loboschefski calls a “hierarchy” of community service programs where the students providing assistance have received some level of training. The lower end includes activities such as “simple fundraising programs.”

Loboschefski said he purposefully recruited professors across disciplines – Dionne’s religion professor, Cathy Gutierrez, for example – to engage as many students as possible.

Sweet Briar’s PACE program takes advantage of a growing trend among college students – the desire to volunteer.

According to a report released in October by the Corporation for National and Community Service, college student volunteering increased by 20 percent between 2002 and 2005.The report, “College Students Helping America,” found that 3.3 million college students volunteered in 2005 – nearly 600,000 more students than three years ago. Emma Meador '09 carving scarabs out of soap with a visitor to Lynchburg's Amazement Square. Meador and classmates from a classics course taught children about ancient Egypt as part of their community service project.It also found that female college students volunteer more than their male counterparts.

The report credits the growth in volunteering to young people who attended high school or were first-year college students during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Volunteering has always been part of Dionne’s life. “No matter what the volunteer project is, I tend to sign up because I enjoy giving back to others. Most of my volunteer work is with children. There is a sense of self-gratification when I see a child accomplish a new task or learn a new fact that makes me always want to return to the volunteer activity,” she said.

“Sweet Briar students are already heavily involved in volunteer activities through their clubs and organizations. We wanted to coordinate that good will more effectively,” Loboschefski said.

“I could go out and help build a home for Habitat for Humanity, but I don’t know if I’d actually want to live in a house I built. My training allows me to help in specific ways, and I can be of the most help to others when the specific skills I possess are needed. With this program we are trying to match Sweet Briar’s educational strengths with community needs,” he said.

The Jessie Ball duPont Fund awarded Loboschefski a grant of $86,500 to start PACE. Sweet Briar provided an additional $42,000. Dionne’s class project, held in November, was the first of seven expected to take place this year. Lauren Michael '09 from Dionne's class, shows elementary students a musical instrument. She spoke with them about music slaves may have listened to.

“Once we found the idea we hit the ground running,” Dionne said. “We had been learning about the lives of the many people who have come to the United States, talking about their living conditions and how religion is integrated into that context. We discovered an SOL [standard of learning] that calls for students to compare and contrast the lives of slaves and plantation owners.”

Dionne said they designed a hands-on workshop using the College’s historical buildings and invited 37 fifth graders from Elon Elementary School to participate.

“We took them through Sweet Briar House and the slave cabin. In the slave cabin they saw actual farming materials. I focused on the fireplace where the children saw canning jars, candles and a slave bracelet. We’d ask, ‘What does this tell you about their lives?’ and help them draw connections between what they’d seen in the plantation house and what they were seeing in the slave cabin.”

“We could see they were making a lot of strong connections between the two,” Dionne added.

Gregory Lipscomb, a teacher from Elon Elementary who attended the workshop with his fifth-grade class, agreed. “The living conditions of the slave quarters had a significant impact on the students I talked to afterward,” he said.

Lipscomb added that because the fifth-graders were making the connections themselves and “constructing their own meaning” of what they were learning, the information would likely stay with them for the long term. Aud Hogan '09 acts as narrator during a puppet show at Amazement Square's Ancient Egypt exhibit.

Eighteen other Sweet Briar students taking an honors course called “Imagining Egypt in Antiquity” delivered their service project on Dec. 2 at the Rightmire Children’s Museum in Lynchburg. The students used storytelling, puppet shows involving Egyptian myths, and crafts such as carving scarabs out of soap, to teach children aged 4 to 9 about ancient Egypt.

“With service learning [students] see the difference that they’re making. You can't duplicate that in the classroom,” said Tom Loftus, visiting professor of business management and co-director of the PACE program.

Sweet Briar faculty also are interested in service learning, Loboschefski said. By next year almost 20 percent of the College’s full-time professors will be participating in the PACE program.