Partnering With a Community Service Agency: A Unique Pedagogy Utilizing Service-Learning for Students To Meet Course and Program Outcomes

Hello everyone and welcome to our poster entitled “Partnering with a Community Service Agency: A Unique Pedagogy Utilizing Service Learning with Teaching, Learning and Scholarship” I am Christina Snider, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan-Flint in the School of Nursing. I am pleased to be here with one of our graduate students Georgianna Collier. This poster summarizes our partnership with North Eastern Michigan Community Service Agency. This partnership began in 2020 out of mutual needs. Our SON needed clinical hours for our students and NEMCSA needed preschool physicals to meet their grant requirements. Our SON partnered with NEMCSA and together we planned and facilitated health fairs where our students gain clinical hours and the children have preschool physicals done. This partnership has been fruitful and we have held 14 health fairs, over 150 students have participated, over 500 physicals have been done, and over 1500 clinical hours have been completed. In addition, this has served as a platform of research for the involved faculty member, myself. There have been 3 years of data collected on student perceptions of how service learning has impacted their learning in the pediatric clinical course. We have one published manuscript and two more almost completed. We have received internal grant funding of over 3,000.00. The students report an increased appreciation of cultural diversity/competence, an appreciation for the challenges of others with health disparities, a feeling of accomplishment in underserved communities, a feeling of helping others as well as enjoyment of mentorship and interaction with their peers and faculty in an environment typical classrooms do not lend themselves to for learning. Thank you for visiting our poster