Name: Rebecca Green
Role within Service-Learning: S-L Teaching Assistant
College Affiliation: College of Social Sciences & Humanities
Major: Sociology
Minor: Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
How are your values expressed through your community engagement and Service-Learning work?
As a university with a tremendous share of resources, and significant impact in Boston, we as an institution have an ethical obligation to work with and support communities in the city. The service-learning program seeks to rebuild partnerships between our university and historically under-served communities, which reflects my values for social justice and community engagement.
What is one thing everyone should know about Service-Learning?
Everyone should know that service-learning extends far beyond what one might imagine the “traditional” service disciplines. While there are service-learning human services and sociology courses, there a significant number of foreign language, engineering, business, and other discipline service-learning courses. These are incredible opportunities to apply the concrete skills that all of us are learning within our disciplines in real world, applied contexts to support the work of incredible community based organizations in the Boston area. It is a way of learning about the city that is hosting our student population, and work alongside folks who are trying to make it better every day.
Did you find Service-Learning or did Service-Learning find you?
Service-learning and I found each other. I took a service-learning section of Connections & Decisions, my first year, undeclared major course and worked with a nonprofit serving the aging population in Boston. My 4th year, I took a service-learning human services course through the Northeastern Students4Giving (NS4G) program where I learned about the nonprofit sector, systems thinking, and worked with my class to create a request for proposals for Boston based nonprofits to apply for a $10,000 grant. Out of this course, I began working at the Social Impact Lab on campus, and was asked to return as a Service-Learning teaching assistant in my final semester where I have further deepened my connections with both the NS4G program and Service-Learning at Northeastern.
If Service-Learning were a food, what would it be and why?
Bread. It comes in many shapes and forms, and takes lots of time and care to create the dough (initial contact with community partners), allow it to rise (foster these relationships), and stick it in the oven to create the final product (implement service-learning courses with students).
S-LOG 