THE IMPACT OF ENGAGEMENT AND SERVICE LEARNING ON
MINORITY STUDENT ACCESS AND PERSISTENCE
Problem Statement
This concept paper addresses inter-related needs and priorities between central Indiana
and IUPUI. At the community level, there is a need to close the academic achievement
gap between Hispanic and African-American youth and their Anglo and Asian-American
counterparts and the need to increase the number of youth from these groups who enroll
in post-secondary educational institutions. At the IUPUI level, the needs are expressed in
terms of increasing the enrollment, retention, and persistence to graduation of students
from these target populations and the priorities are to meet the needs of our service-area
communities through appropriate teaching, research, and service.
The problem of the achievement gap is well-documented nationally and is particularly
troublesome in central Indiana. The achievement gap has a pernicious impact on other
quality of life indicators in central Indiana as well. It is correlated to dropout rates, crime
rates, and income levels.
The rapid increase in the Hispanic population in central Indiana over the recent past
makes closing this gap a particularly high priority for community members and
government representatives alike.
These needs and priorities have been consistently reported by many of our partner
agencies and by the community residents served by those agencies. For example, a study
conducted by the IUPUI Center for Urban Policy and the Environment on behalf of La
Plaza found that Hispanic residents consistently ranked “education” as a high
priority/need area in their communities (Center for Urban Policy and the Environment.
2006. Hispanic/Latino Needs in the Indianapolis Area: An Initial Overview. Indianapolis,
IN: Center for Urban Policy and the Environment, page 12).
Likewise, residents in the neighborhoods served by the University’s Community
Outreach Partnership Center, which include relatively high percentages of Hispanic and
African-American residents, have indicated in focus groups and resident surveys that they
place a high priority in increasing the quality of their schools and improving the academic
success of their children.
These community needs and priorities intersect with IUPUI’s mission and several of the
strategic priorities identified by the University’s Chancellor. The University’s vision and
mission statement affirms that
“As Indiana's metropolitan university, IUPUI has a responsibility to use education to
transform the lives of individual citizens for the improvement of the entire statewide
community, to develop the human potential of all people in Central Indiana for their
personal and social advancement, and to create a civil community of learning where
difference can be understood, respected, and practiced with dignity by each of its
members. Diversity at IUPUI is an educational asset to be used and replenished, and it is
an economic and social necessity. . . . By reflecting in its own numbers the diversity of
the city, state, and world of which it is a part, IUPUI will create opportunities for access
and achievement for all of its citizens. By engaging diverse learners . . . with each other
in reflective and intentional goals, IUPUI can better prepare graduates for citizenship, for
work, and for personal fulfillment.” (http://www.iupui.edu/diversity/vision.html).
However, in spite of this commitment, IUPUI’s student enrollments, particularly at the
undergraduate level, do not reflect the level of diversity desired by the University. For
example, although Hispanic residents account for nearly 6% of the total population of
Marion County (the county in which Indianapolis is located) and 7% of the total public
school enrollment in Marion County Schools (Hispanic/Latino Needs in the Indianapolis
Area, pp. 8, 10), Hispanic student enrollment as a percentage of total undergraduate
enrollment at IUPUI is two percent, a level which has been relatively constant since 2000
(Source: IUPUI Office of Information Management and Institutional Research,
http://imir.iupui.edu/newiport/pi/di/2005_images/2004DiversityIndicators.pdf). Likewise,
whereas African-American residents make up nearly 14% of the total population of the
city of Indianapolis (U.S. Census Bureau), African-American students account for only
9.4% of the total undergraduate enrollment at IUPUI (IUPUI Office of Information
Management and Institutional Research, op. cit.).
Not only is there an under-enrollment of Hispanic and African-American students in
terms of reflecting the population of its service area, there is a gap between the retention
and persistence rates of Hispanic and African-American students and their Anglo and
Asian-American counterparts. First-year retention rates for minority students at IUPUI
have averaged 5% lower than the overall first year retention rate over the past five years
(Ibid.) The gap between minority six-year graduation rates and the overall six-year
graduation rate is even larger. Whereas the overall six-year graduation rate between 1993
and 1998 averaged 21.5%, the average six-year graduation rate for minority students over
the same time period was 12% (Ibid.). In other words, not only are undergraduate
enrollments of Hispanic and African-American students lower than they should be, but an
unacceptably high proportion of the Hispanic and African-American students who do
enroll are not completing their college degrees.
There is a significant overlap then between the community’s need to improve the
academic success and educational attainment of pre-college, Hispanic and AfricanAmerican youth, and the University’s mission and goal with respect to increasing the
diversity of its student population.
The Importance of Civic and Student Engagement in Addressing the Problem
Several academic units at IUPUI, including the Center for Service and Learning, share
the belief that the key to student success is student engagement, especially for those
students who are at greater risk of not meeting their educational goals. For CSL, student
engagement is defined in terms of civic engagement meaning institutional and
curricular connections to the public good in local communities. Engagement, in this
sense, is the key to both access and persistence. The centrality of engagement in the local
community builds formal ties between the campus and community. The focus on an
engaged pedagogy, i.e. service-learning, establishes profound bonds between students
and campus-based outreach activities. These bonds, in turn, create meaningful learning
experiences for students by connecting their campus life to the real life of their
communities.
For other units, University College for example, student engagement is defined as the
degree to which students are directly involved in their academic experiences through
student-faculty interaction, student-student interaction (collaborative learning), active
learning strategies, and use of campus academic and social support resources. Data
collected by researchers such as Vincent Tinto and George Kuh indicate a direct
correlation between student engagement, so defined, and student persistence and
academic success.
Service-learning, both as a teaching practice and as a strategy for learning, ably
synthesizes both of these approaches to student engagement.
The Impact of Service-Learning on Student Access and Retention
Service-learning is a teaching methodology that links classroom learning and community
service to enrich learning experiences and emphasize civic responsibility. The term
“service-learning” captures the initiation of students into public problem-solving through
their coursework.
Access
At IUPUI, students from anthropology, business, communication studies, engineering
and technology, paralegal studies, physical education, nursing, sociology, social work,
public affairs, world languages and cultures and many other disciplines go out into
communities to work, learn and mentor. Many work directly with at-risk or economically
disadvantaged K-12 students, and also with their families, to help inspire and prepare
them for a journey to higher education. These service-learning experiences provide a
multi-faceted, two-way bridge between campus and community that is mutually
beneficial for both college students and the community.
Examples of how this can directly affect access for under-represented students include:
 Students from the community have the opportunity to visit or take part in
activities on campuses—for economically disadvantaged children, many of whom
are rarely given the opportunity for experiences beyond their neighborhoods, this
can a critical turning point. Examples of such activities at IUPUI include, but are
not limited to META and Project Lead the Way and the pre-college programming
in University College.
 College student mentors assist K-12 students in reading, math and computer
skills, at the same time providing role models and encouragement to continue
their education into colleges. There are numerous such curricular and cocurricular service activities across a variety of departments at IUPUI.
 The Sam Jones Community Service Scholarship program, which provides
scholarships for incoming and concurrent students whose demonstrated
community-based skills are recognized and directed to enhance community-based
learning on campus through assistance with curricular based service as well as cocurricular community service.
Retention
Deepening and expanding the practice of service-learning is directly related to student
success and retention. The essential characteristics of quality service-learning listed
below actively engage students in the educational enterprise and diminish the boundaries
between the campus and the local community:
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An educational setting that de-centers the faculty, recognizing the authority of
knowledge that community partners and students bring to the learning dynamic.
A reflective teaching methodology that allows for abstract concepts to be tested
against experience and for the interpretation of experience to be informed by
abstract conceptualization.
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A form of education that treats the student as a knowledge producer instead of a
knowledge consumer, engaging the student in process of knowledge creation.
An educational approach that recognizes the importance of developing multiple
intelligences or ways of knowing and that validates the importance of “lived
expertise” to the knowledge-creation process.
Consequently, service-learning as a teaching methodology reflects both the civic-centered
and student-centered definitions of engagement and incorporates the key elements
associated with increased retention:
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Community building on campus through interpersonal collaboration.
Active learning strategies/situated learning experiences.
Emphasis on faculty involvement (instead of staff).
Increased contact time with faculty.
Faculty constructively modeling the learning process.
Approaches that emphasize rich and frequent feedback through reflection.
Service Learning as Learning Theory
In addition to being a powerful pedagogy for civic and student engagement, service
learning is also a powerful learning strategy, particular for “new” learners, many of
whom come from under-represented groups. Charles Schroeder of the University of
Missouri found that the majority of today’s first-year students prefer a “sensing learning
pattern” and best enter the learning process through “direct, concrete experiences.”
Since, however, the majority of today’s faculty have “prospered under the traditional
lecture system, where the focus was on coverage of material through teaching by telling,”
helping more of today’s students participate actively in higher learning necessarily entails
helping faculty develop a more concrete, experiential approach to teaching and learning.1
Hence, CSL has taken a leading role in building the capacity of faculty to revise their
teaching strategies through the incorporation of service learning.
In addition to providing the type of learning experiences Schroeder identified, service
learning also provides a strategy for addressing the learning styles of individuals from
non-Anglo cultures. Roberto Ibarra, underlines the critical importance of higher
education’s learning to value the educational styles of those from “high context”
cultures.2 Like the work of Schroeder, Ibarra’s research suggests that greater student
access and success will only result from our rethinking the assumptions upon which
teaching and learning are based. Of all the new teaching and learning initiatives to be
found in the contemporary academy, only service-learning brings the learning process
home not only to where many previously excluded students literally live, but also to the
high context, connected knowing with which many of those students are most
psychologically comfortable. It is our contention that no amount of refining of traditional
“distanced” learning modalities will in and of themselves succeed in welcoming and
1
Schroeder, Charles C. (1993). New students, new learning styles. Change, Sep/Oct 93, 25 (5), 21-27.
Ibarra, R.A. (2000). Beyond affirmative action: Reframing the context of higher education. Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press.
2
retaining large numbers of traditionally underserved students. What is needed, then, is a
pedagogical “biculturalism” that takes seriously more holistic, less exclusively cognitive
approaches to teaching and learning.
In sum, as both a pedagogy and a theory of learning, service-learning reflects the
essential characteristics of the best strategies for engaging students in the educational
enterprise while diminishing the boundaries between the campus and the local
community. Among those essentials are:
 An educational setting that values different types of learning, allows students to
be active rather than passive learners, and recognizes the experience and
knowledge that community partners and students bring to the learning dynamic.
 A form of education that treats the student as a knowledge producer instead of a
knowledge consumer, engaging the student in process of knowledge creation.
 An educational approach that recognizes and validates the importance of lived
experience, and helps students to learn abstract concepts by testing them against
their experience, as well as informing their interpretation of experiences with
abstract conceptualizations.
 An opportunity for students to provide leadership in ways that value their
community experience
The following table summarizes the connections between what we know about minority
student success and service learning.
Student persistence indicators and service learning
Indicators of student
Relationship with Service Learning
persistence/retention
Students at risk for not attending college
Community-campus relationships
are more likely to do so if their friends do
developed through service-learning
programming build social capital in
communities. Communities with strong
social capital, in turn, provide permissive
environments for students at-risk for not
attending college. In addition, SL is can be
an effective tool in developing “bridging
capital.”
Cost of attending is an obstacle for lowFederal financial aid is rewarding service,
and middle-income families
e.g., AmeriCorps, VISTA, FWS
requirements. In addition, many
institutions are providing scholarships and
other forms of financial assistance to
students that demonstrate community
service and civic involvement. IUPUI has
among the largest America Reads/America
Counts and service scholarship programs in
the country.
Student-Student interaction increases
SL provides opportunities for students to
persistence and retention
become more engaged with their peers and
their peers’ learning experiences, e.g.,
group projects and/or group reflection.
Student-faculty interaction is strongly,
SL provides opportunities for deep
positively correlated to student satisfaction interaction between faculty and students
and student persistence
The wider the gap between students’
SL, especially in the first-year, can reduce
expectations of college and the reality of
the gap between student expectations and
college, the higher the likelihood of
college reality by
transfer or dropout.
 providing opportunities for engaged
learning
 providing opportunities for social
interaction
 providing opportunities for
individual action and autonomy
Caveats
The ability of service learning as a teaching and learning strategy to keep the promises
outlined above depends on meeting several requirements:
 Service should not be an add-on to a course, but should be integrated to the course
content through explicitly articulated learning outcomes.
 The nature of the service should be relevant to course content, and in the case of
minority students, the personal experiences of students.

Students should engage in frequent, critical reflection on their service with
meaningful feedback from their instructors.
 Community partners should have an active role in planning and evaluating the
service experiences.
Generally, when the predicted benefits of service learning are not found, it is because one
or more of the above conditions have not been met.