LEAD California, IARSLCE and GivePulse are proud to announce our next speaker:
Dr. Rochelle Smarr, Director of Experiential Learning at the University of California San Diego
Co-Moderated by Dr. Marisol Morales, Executive Director of the Carnegie Elective Classifications and Dr. Elaine Ikeda, Executive Director of LEAD California.
Our Next Speaker:
Rochelle Smarr, Ed.D., is the Director of Experiential Learning at UC San Diego, where she leads the Experiential Learning team to increase access to and support of engaged learning beyond the classroom through co-curricular activities and academic internship programs. She has held previous roles in the field of community engagement with Students First - New York, City College of New York, Cornell University and University of Pennsylvania. In 2019, she joined California State University, San Marcos as the Assistant Director for Civic Learning and later served as Director of Service-Learning and Civic Engagement before joining UC San Diego in 2023. She is an active member of CUMU and IARSLCE. Serving as the conference journal co-editor for Metropolitan Universities Journal for CUMU, along with hosting a virtual workshop series. In 2023 she was the conference chair for the annual IARSLCE conference in New Orleans, and will resume the role for the upcoming conference in 2024 to be held in San Diego. Click here to learn more about Rochelle.
Abstract:
Title: Stories from the Field: Black Service-Learning Student Experiences
The aim of this research study is to provide a macro picture of Black student's experiences in service-learning through reflective semi-structured interviews (Creswell, 2015; Shah, 2020). To better understand the experiences of Black students' service-learning experiences, a grounded research study was used to highlight themes that emerged from the data collected by participants (Charmaz, 2017; Kimball et al., 2016; Mertler, 2019). Together the conceptual frameworks of transformative learning theory and student voice theory provided a lens into how students make meaning of their service-learning experiences. By sharing their own narrative stories about what they learned (transformative learning theory) and how they learned through their service-learning experiences (student voice theory) (Cook Sather, 2002; Cook- Sather, 2006; Kiely, 2005; Matthews & Dollinger, 2022; Mezirow, 1997; Welch & Plaxton- Moore, 2019).