Haas Center for Public Service

Talisman concert for Haas celebration

1. Reciprocity through Partnership

Develop collaborative relationships with community partners and recognize their role as educators of student participants.
Involve potential community partners in the design of service projects to ensure the value and relevance of the work.

Working Toward Reciprocity
Science in Service connects Stanford undergraduates to neighboring youth through science mentorship. Each quarter, Haas Center students and staff develop a theme to unify their after-school science lessons at the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula (BGCP). BGCP staff contribute ideas and feedback on the chosen theme, providing important perspective on community needs within the curriculum development process. Recently, Haas Center tutors proposed the theme of forensic science to BGCP staff. Staff expressed concern about forensic science’s connection with crime and popular television shows like CSI. The staff explained their vision for Science in Service: to give BGCP students tools to better understand themselves and the natural environment. Taking this feedback into account, the Haas Center tutors decided to focus instead on "human biology of the senses,” working with BGCP students to better understand the science behind vision, sight, smell, touch, and hearing.

Reflection Questions
What does reciprocity look like between you and your community partner(s)? How do you evaluate community partner needs and interests? What strategies can you use to show appreciation to your community partners for their educational role?

2. Humility

Encourage students to serve with a listening and learning attitude as part of the process of getting things done in a service-learning situation.
Prepare students to view any service work they are asked to do as a valuable learning opportunity that complements and challenges their knowledge.

Working Toward Humility
Haas Center program staff challenge students to consider the privilege that comes with their Stanford affiliation and to recognize the value of community partners’ rich history and expertise. It could be easy at times for a student volunteer to criticize the work of a community partner because the student is coming from a place of privilege and/or detachment from context. Student tutors working in under-resourced schools, for example, are encouraged to view teachers as experts, with a deep knowledge of effective strategies to reach individual students. Through leadership development advising and programming, student service organizations learn to leverage their unique resources and acknowledge their limitations in order to approach communities with humility.

Reflection Questions
How will you prepare yourself and your team to be humble and respectful in service experiences? What does humility look like in your service context?

3. Respect for Diversity

Create an atmosphere that models respect for diversity, broadly and inclusively defined.
Train students in issues of diversity.
Encourage collaboration among diverse campus-community groups.

Valuing Respect for Diversity
The Public Service Leadership Program (PSLP) strives to include participants from diverse socio-economic, racial, cultural, and academic backgrounds working on a range of social justice issues. Haas Center staff members actively seek nominations for the program from a variety of academic departments, ethnic and cultural community centers, and other student affairs offices to ensure wide representation. Once students are admitted to the program, their different perspectives allow them to provide tremendous insight to each other as they collaborate on leadership challenges. In the program’s introductory course, students directly grapple with how their personal identities, experience of privilege, and backgrounds affect their approach to service leadership through a “World Café” dialog called “The Take-a-Stand Café.” By actively recruiting a broad range of students and having direct dialog around these topics, the program continually works toward respect for diversity.

Reflection Questions
How do you and your team explore and respect the diversity among your partners? Are there any diversity related issues in your service context that you should address?

4. Commitment

Model and emphasize to students the importance of keeping commitments, tacit as well as explicit, made to community partners.
Provide feedback mechanisms for accountability to community partners (e. g., a designated staff person at the Haas Center who community partners feel comfortable contacting with any concerns).
Clarify the expectations and time frame of the service project to both students and partners.

Clarifying and Fulfilling Commitments
The Stanford College Prep Program motivates and supports first-generation, college-bound youth from East Palo Alto Academy High School on their journey to higher education. Each year, more than 45 Stanford undergraduates serve as tutors and mentors to 75 high school students. At the beginning of the year, a panel of local community organizations discusses the importance of volunteer consistency with all undergraduate tutors. All Stanford tutors commit to at least three months of weekly tutoring sessions. A group of six undergraduates commit to a full academic year as tutor coordinators, guided by full-time program staff working in close consultation with East Palo Academy teachers.

Reflection Questions
What are your community partner’s expectations? How will your service effort be sustained after you are no longer involved? Have you thought about what happens when the expectations of the community are not met? If you are leading other volunteers, what commitment are you asking them for? What commitment should you be asking for?

5. Ongoing Communication and Clear Expectations

Provide a structured experience that encourages safe, comfortable channels of communication and sets clear expectations between students and community organization representatives.
Clarify community organization’s preferences for service projects.

Working Toward Ongoing Communication and Clear Expectations
United Students for Veterans' Health (USVH) Stanford chapter brings volunteers to the Menlo Park division of the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. Students spend time with veterans at the Geriatric-Psychiatric Nursing Home Care Unit each week, enriching the unit with lively conversation, outdoor walks, and friendship. A recreational therapist at the VA conducts an orientation session on patient care and assigns volunteers to the veterans most in need of interaction. Each week, volunteers write a brief account of their experiences that is reviewed by VA staff. The USVH student board fields all comments and instructions from the hospital, which are then communicated to individual volunteers as needed. This clear path of communication has allowed USVH to continuously work with its individual volunteers to improve the quality of service.

Reflection Questions
How could you improve communication with other people or groups engaged in your issue? Have you established clear lines of ongoing communication with your community partner(s) and facilitated an environment of reciprocity and openness?

6. Preparation

Prepare students for service projects with the attitudes, skills, and knowledge they will need to serve ethically and effectively.
Involve community partners in preparing or training students whenever possible.
Guide students to seek current and historical information about their partner organizations and communities before beginning the service project, and include time for students to ask questions.

Improving Preparation
The Public Service Fellowship Program supports intensive summer work experiences in nonprofits, government agencies, and NGOs. Guided by fellowship staff, faculty mentors, and summer supervisors, students engage in in-depth preparation for their summer fellowships. All students participate in a one-day orientation, designed to incorporate recommendations from past fellows and participating organizations. During Spring Quarter, students develop learning plans to articulate their summer objectives. Pre-summer meetings with faculty mentors and summer supervisors provide a starting point for discussion about each placement’s history and needs.

Reflection Questions
What does your personal plan for preparation look like? How might you creatively build preparation into your program design? How has your academic work prepared you for this experience? Where do you see connections between your academic/intellectual background and practical application? What have you not been prepared for in the past and what did you learn from that?

7. Context

Assist students in connecting service experiences with the larger contemporary and historical political, economic, and social context in which the service experience is embedded.
Involve knowledgeable community members and utilize other available materials to present key issues specific to the community and organization in which students are serving

Including Context
Alternative Spring Break (ASB) exposes students to complex social and cultural issues through experiential learning, group discussion, readings, and reflection activities. During Winter Quarter, all ASB participants take a 1-unit directed reading course facilitated by trip leaders and sponsored by a Stanford faculty member. Students participating in the 2008 trip, “Separate but Unequal: Urban Education Issues in California,” for example, discussed how race/ethnicity, culture, poverty, and residence impact educational attainment and achievement. Students deepened their understanding of the broader social and legal contexts surrounding their issue by meeting with educational experts, practitioners, and policymakers. This understanding brought a valuable perspective to the service work they performed on their spring break trip.

Reflection Questions
How well do you understand the broader context of your issue area? What resources are available to you that might deepen your understanding of the context surrounding your issue? What can you share with others to help facilitate this learning? How will you keep yourself and others up to date on events that influence your service issue or site?

8. Participatory Pedagogy

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

Working Toward Participatory Pedagogy
Supported by a Haas Center faculty grant, Professor Carol Winograd teaches a service-learning course on women and aging. Class requirements include readings, films, guest lectures, and a 21-hour service commitment that involves connecting with an older woman. Students spend time conversing with their “older buddy,” eating meals together, and participating in daily activities such as exercise classes, movies and art. For many students, spending time with their new friend is eye-opening and stereotype-busting. The exposure to the perspective of an older woman brings the class readings and discussions to life. At the end of the quarter, Professor Winograd hosts a celebratory lunch, including singing entertainment by the Raging Grannies, during which class participants, old and young, speak to their mutual learning.

Reflection Questions
How can you more fully engage all stakeholders in your work? What is the nature of their knowledge and experience? How can your community partner contribute to your learning outcomes and overall experience?

9. Safety

Anticipate and take precautionary steps to ensure the safety of all people involved in service activities.
Comply with special safety or liability requirements of community partners.

Ensuring Safety
Each summer, Haas Center fellows work on service projects in communities ranging from New York City to Rio de Janeiro and from Accra to Taipei. Students who anticipate needing alternative transportation or cell phones due to safety concerns are awarded a modest stipend supplement from a designated “safety and security” fund. Fellowship staff members incorporate safety awareness and scenario planning into all orientation activities, and students serving internationally are enrolled in a travel insurance program through the university risk management office.

Reflection Questions
What are the particular safety concerns in your issue area? Have you spoken with your community partner(s) about safety issues and made plans to help mitigate risk?
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Principles of Ethical and Effective Service Document

Mission, Values, and Principles