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URI Students Share Gift of Learning

Posted on: Tuesday, 5 July 2005, 18:00 CDT

* About 100 students are connecting classroom learning with community service in a program that has earned the school a spot in The Princeton Review's publication, Colleges with a Conscience.

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PROVIDENCE - Vanica Mei holds the edges of a template while little Robyn Levasseur, 4, traces the shape of a doorknob tag onto white paper.

Robyn takes her time to color the tag while Mei, a petite University of Rhode Island student, watches her patiently from across the arts and crafts table.

An junior elementary education and psychology major, Mei enjoys participating in the university's Mentor/Tutoring Internship program.

Thus, she requested to work with the children at George West Elementary School in Providence for another semester after completing her first in December. Two weeks ago, she volunteered at a book fair the internship program organized at the school. The program had obtained 4,200 books through a grant. Mei and her course mates helped to distribute 3,600 books to the elementary school students, who are mostly from families with low incomes. The URI students also taught the the children arts and crafts.

Service-learning programs such as these have earned URI a spot in The Princeton Review's latest publication, Colleges with a Conscience, which was released in bookstores June 22.

The programs connect classroom learning with community service. Eighty-one schools have been selected for the book, out of 950 colleges and universities affiliated with Campus Compact, a national nonprofit organization. According to its publications manager, Karen Partridge, the organization seeks to promote civic engagement on campus, and has partnered with The Princeton Review to survey colleges for their community involvement.

Ten years ago, The Princeton Review ranked URI as the nation's top party school.

However, the two rankings are not mutually exclusive, said Erik Olson, The Princeton Review's editorial director.

"Just because a school has a socially active campus does not mean it does not have a socially conscientious student body," he said.

Yet things have changed, said Merith Weisman-Ross, a 1994 graduate who is now the coordinator for the Feinstein Center for Service Learning at URI. The Princeton Review had also named URI as the number-one party school in 1993 and 1994.

"It was wild," Weisman-Ross said. But there are less parties now, and students are behaving better, she said, partly because URI President Robert L. Carothers started imposing stricter alcohol and drug policies in 1993 and 1994.

The policies were implemented after some high-profile alcohol- related incidents, Carothers said. The policies met a lot of resistance at first, he said, because students expected parties, drinking and drugs to be part of the college scene, especially in a resort community.

"We had an agenda to build a different learning culture," Carothers said. Community work helps students put others' interests before their own, he said.

"When you put other people ahead of yourself, when you begin to do more philantrophic work, you recognize others as significant human beings, you think of others, you become better citizens," Carothers said.

With generous endowments from Rhode Island philanthropist Alan Shawn Feinstein and industrialist John Hazen White Sr., the university created service-learning centers and programs for students.

One of Feinstein's endowments established the service component of a mandatory freshman seminar in 1995. Through the program, every URI freshman is involved in at least one community-service activity.

Weisman-Ross said she has also seen an increase in student clubs and societies geared toward community service; increase in participation in these organizations and the amount of work they've accomplished. The university's support, including providing scholarships for service programs, have given students the opportunities to be engaged in community work, she said.

According to the university's profile in The Princeton Review publication, 48 service-learning courses exist in 17 academic programs and more courses are added each year. The Mentor/Tutor Internship course was started seven years ago by URI political science Prof. Al Killilea and administered by the Political Science Department.

When it started, the course only had eight students, said Program Coordinator Cherie Aiello. Now, it has about 100 students in the fall semester and 125 in the spring. Students serve as role models. They help disengaged youths with their academic work -- reading to the younger ones and assisting the older ones in their projects, Aiello said.

Some students, who joined the course thinking that it would earn them "three easy credits," end up writing in their final paper that they had no idea the children are going to change their lives, Aiello said.

As Colin McNulty helps the children pick out patterns for their tags or bookmarks, color or cut them, he constantly gives them words of encouragement and jokes with them. McNulty, a recent URI graduate and communications major, has been involved in the internship for two years.

"There is no greater reward than to know that you've made a difference in a child's life," McNulty said.

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* Colin McNulty, top left, and Erica Sweitzer make door hangers after school with Antonio Montenegro, 7, as part of URI's Mentoring/ Tutoring Internship Program at the George J. West School in Providence. Carlos Romera, 9, left, flips through a book he selected from a book distribution event at the school.

JOURNAL PHOTOS /

BILL MURPHY

Source: Providence Journal

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