Learning through service: students create impact while gaining professional experience.

• Position: Caring PEOPLE

Helping a young child learn to read. Teaching a refugee mother how to cook healthy meals in a new country. Serving food to someone who hasn't eaten in days. Developing a turn-key marketing campaign for a local nonprofit.

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What is the importance of acts such as these? For High Point University students who take classes in the Service Learning Program, these acts allow them to develop knowledge and skills in a practical way that creates change in the community while learning to work in a challenging, diverse economy. Service Learning breaks open the walls of the traditional classroom to create an experiential classroom out in the world.

When Dr. Joseph Blosser, the Robert G. Culp Jr. Director of Service Learning, arrived at HPU, he found faculty already serving local nonprofits, such as Ward Street Mission, Church World Service and Helping Hands, as a learning tool in their classes. And the campus was filled with students holding fundraisers for causes like breast cancer research, ending hunger and preventing childhood obesity. The stage was set for a service learning experience to be easily integrated into the university's academic program.

There are now numerous faculty on campus who have been trained to effectively integrate...