Lewis & Clark College's Effective and Ethical Service Principles

These principles exist to raise campus awareness about our responsibility to communities and organizations involved with service activities at Lewis & Clark College. We aim to inspire Community – College partnerships that are founded upon the following principles. The principles should be considered a work in progress, presented in order to raise issues and ethical questions to consider when establishing community partnerships.

Reciprocity Through Partnership

Develop collaborative and sustainable relationships with community partners as co-educators. Provide ongoing opportunities for feedback from the community partners.

Humility

Encourage students to serve with an attitude of listening and learning from community partners. Offer diverse and ongoing opportunities for students to discuss, reflect upon and evaluate their action in service.

Respect for Diversity

Develop respectful relationships across differences, including racial, ethnic, cultural, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, educational experience, and language differences. Create an atmosphere in the classroom that models respect for diversity. Engage in discussion and training on issues of diversity. Offer service opportunities that reflect the diversity of the larger community.

Commitment

Emphasize the importance of keeping commitments made to community partners. Provide feedback mechanisms for accountability to community partners. Clarify academic schedule and time frame of community placements.

Ongoing Communication and Expectations

Provide a structure that encourages open communication and clear expectations among students, faculty and community partner. Match students according to organization needs and preferences. Establish clear mutual goals and expectations between students and community partners.

Preparation

Involve community partners in designing and providing preparations. Provide students with current and historical information about their placement organizations and the communities the organization work with before beginning their placements.

Context

Connect specific service-learning experiences with the larger contemporary and historical political, economic and social context in which the service experiences are taking place. Involve knowledgeable community members and utilize other resources related to key issues areas of the communities in which students are placed.

Participatory Pedagogy

Engage all participants as teachers and learners (students, faculty, and community partners). Provide students with opportunities to share new knowledge obtained from their service experience.

Modified from documents created by the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University.