Personally, I am highly interested in bringing you and Bobby to KU. faculty fellows: Dr. Emily Vietti
I started my role in the KU Center for Service Learning in May 2024 and am challenging myself to consistently engage with continuous professional development and education with the intention of better supporting student success and community impact. I don’t have a formal education in one of the more traditionally-aligned majors related to social action—my colleagues tend to have degrees in political science, public policy/administration, sociology, journalism, and social work—and while I know there are countless paths to success, I acknowledge the gaps in my training and stive to fill them. Not only do I wish to avoid unintentional harm to those we serve, but I also want to boost the reach and strength of the CSL’s work.
We are a small team of two full-time staff members with various student assistants and two faculty fellows, with an ever-expanding scope and waning funds. I feel the pressure to develop my own expertise and confidence in facilitating social action activities, conversations, project management skills, and resource databases because the phrase “if not us, then who?” demonstrates our office’s role on campus. Furthermore, in order to bring more passionate and qualified people into the space of “social action,” I need the skills to encourage instructors, students, and community partners to join and then support them while they pursue their own changemaking projects. Sometimes I fear that the service work done at our institution lacks depth and sustainability; I hope that this course development program will help me prepare for pitfalls, challenge me to navigate changing DEI policies, and cement service learning and civic engagement as pillars of the University of Kansas.
By the time this course development program occurs, I’ll be halfway through teaching my first course section of “UNIV 492: Special Projects in the Community” to undergraduates participating in our January Alternative Break service trip. My local and spring break sections will start later in January 2025. I have experience developing and delivering college curriculum across multiple topics (psychology research methods, statistics, project development, leadership studies) with an emphasis in practical application, and I have presented workshops on social change (Stanford Pathways Model, Root Cause, Agents/Targets of Change, Ethical Service, Role of Nonprofits, Civic Engagement Beyond Voting) in classroom settings.
I have multiple resources to help me successfully teach a course about social change including: my supervisor (Kate Kemper) who leads the KU Center for Service Learning (CSL) and has taught the same course for multiple academic years; our CSL faculty fellows in service learning and civic engagement who provide coaching to instructors to incorporate service learning in their courses; and my own active participation in Campus Compact, including their Pathways Working Group and TRUCEN.
My own background in Clinical Psychology features training in clinician-client rapport development, emphasizing the expertise that both clinician and client bring to the dyad. My training in Motivational Interviewing and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy specifically spotlights the role of behavior change and actionable steps to work towards client-identified goals. When working with students and community partners, I tend to generalize these principles to how I work with them to identify personal passions and community problems, support self-reflection, and adapt approaches or paths to solutions according to the individual needs of the people involved.
The course is flexible by design to ensure that students can simultaneously pursue their passions and service community-identified needs. While Alternative Breaks changes site offerings each session, this year’s will include service trips related to food insecurity, LGBTQIA+ youth, wildlife rehabilitation, natural disaster, and climate change. Our Local section of the course can include partnership with nonprofit organizations across Lawrence, KS. I don’t yet know which sites/causes the students will choose, but the top priorities in Lawrence according to my own observations and conversations with students include: affordable and stable housing, food insecurity, repatriation of Native remains and funerary items, and threats to a local wetlands. On campus campaigns could also be related to the recent cessation of KU’s recycling program, merging of identity and culture-based units under one umbrella “Student Engagement Center,” and overly cautious DEI-related changes across campus according to Kansas law HB 2105 which went into effect July 2, 2024.
How did you hear about opportunity
My supervisor Kate Kemper forwarded me the email from the Bonner Program and encouraged me to apply, especially considering our plans to redesign UNIV 492 and expand Center for Service Learning course options.
Student Program Coordinator
