| MARCH 2003 |
Hands-on Education Helps Meet
Community Needs at CC
By Jennifer KulierPhotos by CC students and Colorado State Parks staff members
At the southern city limits of Colorado Springs, beyond the
ever-reaching tentacles of sprawl, lies an oasis.It begins in prairie grassland at the base of Cheyenne Mountain, winds through wetland areas on various seeps and drainages, and climbs through foothills of scrub oak. It eventually ends in ponderosa pine and Douglas fir woodland on the mountain’s slope, providing breathtaking Front Range views.
This oasis is one of Colorado’s newest state parks — Cheyenne Mountain State Park, a unique wildlands property located partially within the city limits. Colorado College students in Keith Kester’s class, Spirit and Nature: Religion and Science, have helped track wildlife and establish a compendium of the creatures inhabiting this land.
Just one class in an initiative for “community-based learning” at CC, Kester’s course represents a new wave in pedagogy where students, faculty, administration, and community members work together to provide opportunities for community involvement and hands-on research. Kester is a professor of chemistry and women’s studies at CC.
Community-based learning is experiential education that simultaneously — and in roughly equal balance — promotes student learning and meets community needs as it is integrated into students’ coursework. It can include class projects that draw upon students’ and faculty’s intellectual expertise to clarify and begin to seek solutions to community problems. It can also include classes that require student internships in community organizations, course fieldwork that uses the community as a laboratory to reflect on and refine theoretical ideas and provides feedback to members of the community, and opportunities for students to teach and learn about their major discipline in off-campus settings.
According to Gay Victoria, director of CC’s Center for Community Service, the college has made a commitment to incorporating community-based learning into academics. This year, the center expanded its staff in order to allow Victoria time to facilitate community-based learning between faculty and community partners.
“Last year, a number of faculty received stipends to include community-based learning components in their courses,” Victoria said. “Also, we have received a grant for successive rounds of faculty stipends over the next three years. It will help provide resources for faculty who want to rethink their courses to involve community-based learning.”
Victoria said she thinks community-based learning will appeal to many professors because it’s a very dynamic way to bring together theory and practice.
For example, Corinne Scheiner, assistant professor of comparative literature, wanted to emphasize to her students that translation and language use are not merely theoretical; rather, they are part of many people’s daily lives. So she has arranged for her students to volunteer at the county health department where they will observe the staff’s interaction with clients, many of whom do not speak English. They will document the nature of inquiries and any difficulties with language translation, and produce a report that may include recommendations on the special needs of the non-English speaking clientele who use the services offered by the health department.
In Kester’s class, 16 students worked in teams to monitor wildlife activity in ten 10x10 meter plots at Cheyenne Mountain State Park. Finding evidence of animals such as bones, tracks, scat, and scratches on tree bark, they determined that the various sampling areas were home to deer, elk, turkey, and small mammals, among other creatures. The work wasn’t easy: The students navigated rough, densely vegetated terrain and sometimes searched on hands and knees to locate tiny tunnels created by voles and scrutinize paw prints in the earth. They summarized their results and presented them to a biologist with the state department of natural resources. The students’ findings will be added to a baseline of similar information gathered earlier by scientists at the site and will be used to keep track of changes in animal activity at the park.
Because Cheyenne Mountain State Park is one of the first Colorado
state parks to utilize geographic information systems (GIS)
— integrating it from the earliest stages of park development
— the CC students also received training in how to use and apply
the technology. GIS technology links maps with databases that
describe the property, providing a valuable tool for natural
resource management. The students used it to locate and navigate
to the plots they surveyed.Cheyenne Mountain State Park is a 1,680-acre property formerly known as the JL Ranch. It became a state park as a result of a partnership between state and local government that made the $16.8 million purchase possible. The tract had been slated for a 2,000-plus home development with two golf courses when state and local government decided to purchase the land for a park. Formally dedicated by Gov. Bill Owens on October 13, 2000, planners say they expect the state park to open to the public late this summer.
The park’s management is pleased with the partnership with CC, according to park manager Rich Dudley, an educator himself. Dudley helped develop Teaching Environmental Sciences Naturally (TEN), a collaborative environmental education program that focuses on providing teachers resources and training for natural science education. The program has become a model for schools in Trinidad, El Paso, Fremont, and Otero counties in Colorado, as well as the San Luis Valley.
“The students provided a valuable service that the park would otherwise have had to pay a great deal of money for, and the students gained skills and an understanding of the wildlife and land here,” said Dudley. “I’m responsible for being a good steward of the state’s financial resources, as well as its natural resources. I am grateful that the students were involved; they essentially replicated the work of a professional biologist.”
This idea of stewardship served as the link between the science and religion aspects of the course.
CC Courses with a Community-Based Learning Component
EC 203: Principles of EconomicsCH 383: Biochemistry II
EV 211: Water
GY 100: Ethnogeology
SO 230: The Media
CO 390: Theory and Practice of Translation
GS 204: Ordering Chaos: Scientific and Religious Strategies
PH 203: Bioethics
CO 118: The Juncture of Ethics and Aesthetics
PY 400: Senior Seminar on Morality
SO 107: Inequality
RE 301: Religious Community Life
SO 190: Topics in Sociology: Gangs
SO 208: Meeting our Neighbors: Experiencing Ethnicity
SW 200: Community Organizations of the Southwest
WS 215: Ecofeminism
WS 410: Practicum in Women’s Studies
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