Proposal #45
Proposal Title: Full recognition of Community Based Learning experiences
Anticipated Savings/Revenue: $72,000 per each 100 students impacted
Units affected: All departments that offer community service learning/community based learning courses.
Impacted Degrees/Courses: More than 100 courses across all Colleges.
Brief Description of Proposal:
San Francisco State students perform hundreds of thousands of hours of community service learning (CSL) and other field experiences each year. In many cases the amount of time well exceeds an equitable award of academic credit. Some departments have recognized this and have added additional units to CSL courses. In other departments, they have not. By recognizing the full effort required of CSL and other experiences, SF State can significantly reduce the time to graduation for many students. This savings can translate into opportunities for other students to enroll in classes and shorten their time to graduation.
Approximately 8,000 students participate in CSL each year. The hours of service in a course can range from 20 hours to 120 with an average of about 60 hours. In the courses requiring more commitment of time, students continue to attend class, do homework, and study for exams in a traditional way. CSL students and faculty frequently report that it is challenging to complete all of the service learning requirements.
It is the proposal herein to encourage departments to examine their CSL/CBL offerings and determine whether or not students should be awarded additional units. We further propose that the University create a mechanism for accumulating these additional units across separate courses in a way that earns an extra course credit. For example, if three separate courses each produced one unit, and these units could be accumulated into one 3-unit block that could count toward a major, general education, or free elective requirement, then the student would have one less course to take for graduation.
It is difficult to estimate the number of students who would be impacted by full implementation of this proposal, but it would likely be several hundred students each semester. If the impact is 3 units per student, then for each 100 students, the program would generate (3 x 100 / 15) = 20 FTES which equates to (20 x $7,200 per year / 2) = $72,000 per semester.
Note: Proposals are posted as submitted, without editing other than to remove the submitter's contact information.
