Welcome to the Real World

Senator Wayne Allard, who heads a HUD oversight committee, recently sent a letter to the regional HUD office asking officials to try to find out what landlords plan to do when their Section 8 contracts expire; he has also told Lopp that he plans to hold Senate hearings on affordable housing in Denver in December or January.

For three years, Robinson tried to convince his colleagues in the political science department to make service learning mandatory, but some professors said their students were too overburdened already, and others didn't want to mandate volunteerism.

"We all believe service learning is extremely important, but some people had some reticence about requiring it, because our students have jobs and family obligations," says senior political science instructor Lucy Ware-McGuffey. "Because UCD is a commuter campus and parking is expensive and hard to find, we worried that requiring students to stay down here and provide community service would add stress. We don't have a philosophical problem with service learning; it was just the reality of our students."

Still, Robinson's suggestion was approved last spring, and the requirement went into effect this year. Students can satisfy the requirement by taking the Urban Citizen course, working or volunteering at the Westside Outreach Center, interning at the State Capitol or at a law firm, or by structuring their own service project. Students can also get credit for community service performed in the past.

"We recognize that students shouldn't feel pressured to participate in any one form of advocacy," Ware-McGuffey says. "They can be involved in work whose advocacy is vastly different from that of the Westside Outreach Center. We've had students work on Governor Bill Owens's campaign, for instance."

The political science department is the only one in UCD's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences that requires service learning, but Associate Dean John Lanning says professors will discuss adding service learning to the general-education requirement of core classes -- math, English, science -- when the college revises its curricula in the near future.

DU's Lisman says it's rare for universities to require service learning, but he knows of three exceptions: California State University at Monterey Bay, Portland State University and the University of Vermont each require students in all disciplines to perform community service. "At DU we have a course -- Service Learning and the Challenges of Multicultural Democracy -- but it's optional," he says. "About 300 students take it each year."

Robinson is happy to see that service learning will be considered in other departments, but he is already moving forward with his own program. Students at the Westside Outreach Center are now providing grant-writing assistance to neighborhood groups, and soon they'll open a cultural youth center at the office so that young people in the neighborhood can have space to work on art a few nights a week.

Each semester, Robinson's students design a course at West High School in conjunction with CU Succeeds, a joint effort of the Denver Public Schools and the university. West High students can earn college credits by taking the class, which stresses activism; this year, students in the political leadership development class -- which is taught by UCD students and professors -- will learn about the political history behind Denver's west side. At the end of the school year, the students will lead a walking tour for the public and guide people to politically significant sites in their neighborhood, such as the former headquarters of the Crusade for Justice, a 1960s militant Chicano movement.

Robinson beams with pride when he talks about how fulfilling it is to watch his students pass along the importance of service learning to even younger students.

"It's wrong to say that we should be neutral," Robinson says, "because what we're doing is...well, heck, I'll just say it: What we're doing is right. And we'll push the envelope as far as we can."