Professor Mavis Morton and 400 First Year Students Engage with the Community

Professor Mavis Morton has found an innovative way of involving 400 first year undergraduate students in wide-ranging community engaged learning projects – without sending this mass of students out knocking on overwhelmed community organizations front doors! While the project itself only accounts for 5% of the students’ overall grade, the impact of engaging students in community-facing projects at this early stage in their University trajectory is invaluable.

How did she do it? The Sociology course for Crime & Criminal Justice students were tasked with researching an organization whose mission/ mandate addresses crime or crime prevention. It is then the students’ responsibility to find some way of creatively contributing to the organizations.

For example, Guelph Women In Crisis organizes an annual “Take Back the Night” march, and were keen to have more people involved as participants and mobilizers in the effort to raise awareness around violence against women. 50 students from the class of 400 came out with posters, t-shirts, and enthusiasm—all working to contribute to a highly successful march. Other students hit the streets with Trick-or-Eat to collect food items for the Guelph Food Bank.

While many students are choosing to volunteer with their chosen organization, others have sent articles of possible interest to the community organization, or are participating in awareness raising campaigns.

All projects are pre-approved by either Morton or one of the course Teaching Assistants. The students are then required to submit proof of their involvement/ contribution, and write a short reflective piece on the experience that explicitly links their project to broader course themes and theoretical perspectives.

When asked about what possessed her to take on the challenging task of incorporating a community engaged learning component into such a large course, Morton stressed that while she has long been learning with/ in the community alongside students in small upper level classes, she had been waking up at night thinking that there had to be a way to involve students in this kind of learning at an earlier point. Even in a large first year class.

While recognizing the limitations imposed on her by numbers and relative inexperience, Morton has managed to create a project that a) meets the students where they are at in terms of experience b) avoids the potential pitfalls of unleashing 400 students on community organizations and c) carefully links the experience to theory and policy addressed in the course.

Engaging 400 first year students with a range of community organizations is a daunting task—especially considering how strapped for time many non-profits are and how community-facing projects can run the risk of being more work for the organizations involved. In her innovative approach, Morton has explicitly asked students not to knock on doors or impose on the community organizations in any way. The focus here has remained firmly on providing some kind of contribution that does not require extra effort on the part of the agencies involved.