Mission
Affirming central goals of the College, the Underwood Stryker Institute engages students, faculty, and community members in sustained partnerships that foster collaborative learning and civic participation in a diverse, democratic society. By forging a link between service and learning, the Institute works to strengthen the community, invigorate the educational experience, and promote students’ informed and ethical engagement to build a more just, equitable and sustainable world.

Our Definition of Service-Learning
Service-learning is a form of experiential education that explicitly integrates academic study and community service so that each enhances the other. It connects theory with practice, and builds communities of learners, through ongoing collaboration between campus and community partners. It requires of students both critical analysis and purposeful reflection on the structure and meaning of the experience. Faculty and their community counterparts design activities to meet the learning goals of faculty and students as well as the objectives of the community partner. Most often, the service relates conceptually to the content of an academic course and is closely guided by a faculty member who introduces a strong analytic, discipline- or theory-oriented component into the service activities.

Our Philosophy
We believe students, faculty, and the community offer one another rich and complex learning opportunities from which all can prosper. Service-learning provides opportunities for the intellectual and personal growth of students while placing a premium on the central purpose of service—to meet community-identified needs. Community members must actively shape the scope and nature of the collaboration, emphasizing both the assets and the needs of their constituencies.
Service-learning can create defining moments in students’ lives. When service opportunities are structured in developmental sequences, students can engage in progressively responsible, aware, and challenging actions that address structural injustices in our society. Service-learning thrives when it is one of a diverse range of sustained community partnerships offering a continuum of engagement for students, faculty, and community members.

Whom We Serve

• The primary focus of the Institute is to develop and sustain academic service-learning opportunities for Kalamazoo College students and faculty in the greater Kalamazoo community.
• The Institute collaborates with the community and its representatives to assure that projects and programs meet the needs and recognize the assets of both campus and community constituencies through equalitarian and reciprocal planning, implementation and evaluation processes
• The Institute also collaborates with experiential program areas (e.g., International Programs, the First-Year Experience, Career Development) to expand and integrate service-learning projects and courses off-campus and abroad, when they contribute to programmatic goals and students’ individual developmental sequences.

Our Goals
The Institute

• supports the development and implementation of academically rigorous service-learning courses across the curriculum that respond to needs and effectively utilize assets identified by the community.
• seeks and promotes opportunities for student and faculty scholarship within the realms of citizenship, community engagement, and service-learning pedagogy.
• structures service opportunities in developmental sequences over the full four years of education that offer students progressively responsible service and leadership experiences in culturally diverse settings.
• assists students to develop the knowledge, skills, sensitivity, and commitment necessary for a lifetime of meaningful and effective participation in public life and in their communities.
• actively seeks the guidance of community, faculty, staff, and student constituencies to continually assess and improve our work.