Medaille College Undergraduate Students Present Community 101 Fair Community-based Learning Focuses | Schools
Today, the Kevin I. Sullivan Campus Center at Medaille College was filled with over 350 first-year students as they presented the results of their community-based learning projects completed over their first semester at the college’s annual Community 101 Fair.
Displaying multimedia and poster presentations to faculty, staff, students and community representatives, the goal of Community 101 is to extend learning beyond the classroom by exploring Buffalo’s history, ecology, technology, leadership and more through hands-on research and collaboration with local organizations. Sample projects included:
Balanced Measures: Accommodating Individual and Community Needs: After examining various youth intervention agencies that service the city of Buffalo, students worked with youth at the Northwest Buffalo Community Center. Combining this experience with research on youth intervention agencies, students developed position papers on how communities can best serve at-risk youth through intervention and mentoring services.
Diversity and Immigration in Our Society: Through research and a service project with Journey's End, students explored the struggles that refugees face, myths about immigration, and the ways in which organizations in WNY work with refugees. As a result, students organized a campus donation drive in partnership with Journey's End and documented the achievements and challenges they experienced while working to serve refugee populations.
Strangers, Weirdoes, and Rebels: The Power and Danger of Difference in Society: After exploring the recent video campaign It Gets Better, which targets anti-gay bullying, students produced three powerful video messages to marginalized groups in their own community: LGBT youth, youth affected by poverty and homelessness and incarcerated youth.
Unearthing Identity: Students examined local identity from an archeological perspective. Through work with the University of Buffalo's Archeology Lab, students learned how artifacts provide a unique understanding of the early history of WNY and used their research to create a time capsule to capture what future archeologists of Buffalo may uncover about our local identity in 2010.
“Over the past few years, the Community 101 projects have shown how a renewed emphasis on contributing to the local community is reciprocally beneficial,” said Brad E. Hollingshead, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Foundational Learning & Assessment at Medaille. “As students connect to the story and institutions of Buffalo, their creative energies and talents, as well as those of their teachers, are brought to bear on important local issues. At the same time, the opportunity for students to integrate and apply their classroom learning to real-world problems is a potent means for realizing the college’s academic mission.”
"It is a pleasure to watch these students engage with their subject matter, said Alan Bigelow, Ph.D., Professor of Humanities at Medaille. “They are venturing out into the community, a community which some of them were born in, and others are seeing for the first time. They are actively exploring their surroundings, and applying research and critical thinking skills to analyze local problems and issues."
With campuses in Buffalo, Amherst and Rochester, Medaille College (medaille.edu) is a dynamic, private college committed to serving the higher education needs of western New York. Medaille is known for its flexible delivery systems, offering master’s, bachelor’s and associate degrees through day, evening, weekend and online programs.