Creating a Sustainable Service Project:  A Proposal

For my service project, I am thinking about working with Our Daily Bread (ODB) or another community organization that I partnered with in previous semesters in my technical writing class. While I am not super close to Our Daily Bread, I am passionate about creating sustainable relationships and building strong partnerships between academia and the community. I have already contacted ODB, and I have been waiting as long as possible to hear back from the volunteer coordinator, Becky. She mentioned last semester that she would be interested in working with my class again, but after emailing her twice and leaving a voicemail, I still haven’t heard anything, so this may be a dead end. I will extend my search then to rEcess and Stillwater and Perkins Animal Shelter to see if there might be any bites there. Last semester my students worked with rEcess, because someone was connected to the organization, and it was a big success. The other two organizations are ones that I would have to start this semester and continue to cultivate in future semesters.

Regardless of the partner, the project follows the same format. In the entry level technical writing classroom, students have to investigate a problem. When they don’t have a real client or partner, 10/10 times they choose parking or the need for healthier options on campus. This was true at my master’s institution as well. They choose these issues because these are issues to them. This becomes problematic because these reports turn into more theoretical projects, and since they don’t work with a client to fully understand the root of the “problem” most time they do all this work and nothing comes of it, or more importantly, they don’t truly understand the politics or issues surround the “problem”. Many times when students work on these projects they come to the same solution that they a) aren’t going to change anyone’s mind (because they haven’t been working with them),  b) the topic they view as a problem isn’t viewed as a problem by others; and/or c) this project is just so extremely large, a semester is not a long enough time to tackle it.

So, long story short, I started working with clients and community partners in my classroom. In previous semesters, I would find the partners, and my students could pitch additional ideas and/or choose one of the partners/clients I had already been in contact with. During this project they write a proposal to me telling me how they will investigate the problem, and then they write a report (usually with deliverables) to the client/partner about their results and proposed solution. The deliverables are usually what interests the partners/clients the most. In the past, I’ve had students make brochures, surveys, cost comparison sheets, etc. I had to tweak the assignment to include this after a partner mentioned that was what she was most interested in.

This portion of the deliverables is helpful to the client/partner, and the process is helpful to teach students the genre of proposals/reports, how to work with a client, how to work collaboratively, and how to handle critique/feedback. One issue I’ve noticed with these projects is the sustainability of working with partners/clients. For this semester, the paper I write might be “Friction Points” of all the issues I’ve made when starting to work with clients and community partners such as the client/partner dropping the project mid-semester; students not actually turning in the final project to the partner (but saying they did); finding partners when I’ve only been in the town for a little over a year. I am hoping to go beyond this and work with a client from a previous semester, but if the project fails, that might be what the paper turns into (but I am going to work really diligently to try it more successful).
For this class, I am hoping to work with one of the community partners I worked with last semester and go from there. I know there is a very possible reality that out of the three I worked with last semester, I may have no bites to work with them again. At the moment, that is my biggest fear. I am worried because so much of my paper of wanting to create a sustainable relationship is built on that idea. If this occurs, this semester the paper might be more of a theoretical conference paper based on mostly research and issues I encountered, but I also want to use this as a qualifying paper and have a case study with at least two semesters of data. So, as a backup, I am trying to locate three additional community partners such as the Humane Shelters to help make this project more of reality (even if this semester it doesn’t work). My goal is to contact the three additional partners this upcoming week. I usually send out an email asking a few questions, but I will also call them or meet with them, so I can interview them as well. In the past, the email/conversation sort of has the following outline/questions asked.

• Ask community partner to explain role a bit more in detail (I always try to find out as much as possible myself) and a little more about the organization.
• Quick explanation of tech writing and the internal and external projects.
• Ask what kind of writing needs/wants the organization might have?
• Are you interested in working with students (possibly for several semesters on different projects)?
• Are there any issues/worries you have about working with students or us on this project?

Right now, the outline is a little bare bone, so I will need to flesh it out more. In the future, I hope to continue this project. In a perfect, fluffy-cloud world, I would find a partner that would work with my classes until I graduate and then someone else would continue working with that partner, but realistically, I know that is highly unlikely. I have an IRB approved that includes working with community partners and my class, but I will have to make an addendum to include different questions for the community partner to answer and restructure some of it so that I can better gauge engagement and overall experience of the project. Some of these questions would ask how much the students communicated with them; if they felt the project was worthwhile for their organization (why or why not); if they want to continue working with the class in future semesters; etc.