A Lesson in Service Learning and Community Engagement

Abstract

Our service-learning course focused on a polluted and impoverished Detroit neighborhood and taught all involved with the class— students, academics, and practitioners— the powerful impact that studio immersions in communities can have on the learning outcomes for students. Through this experience, we learned that in order to make broad notions of sustainability more tangible to students and community residents, they must be enacted through the lens of localized issues.