Multimedia Reporting (Bradford-Utsler)

As Katy Humpert parks her car in the driveway of her Lawrence home, she shows her nerves by fumbling with her keys and then with the door to her house.

Today is an important day. It is the first day that Humpert, Winfield senior, is bringing Adrian to her home for their bi-weekly tutoring session.

Adrian is a 24-year-old immigrant from Mexico who was paired with Humpert through Project Bridge, a city-wide organization that provides tutoring to members of the community who are learning English as a second language.

At the beginning of the semester, Humpert went to Project Bridge in search of volunteer work that would fulfill the requirement for her Spanish through service learning class. Today, after three months filled with countless sessions, the progress both have made is evident as they converse without a trace of a language barrier, switching easily between Spanish and English.

For Maria Alonso, the graduate teaching assistant of the course Spanish through service learning this spring, there is no better reward then witnessing a successful match of student and tutor as a result of the course’s two hour weekly volunteer requirement.

“The opportunity to interact with native Spanish speakers every week helps the student understand the dynamic of the Latino community in the United States because they are interacting with the people who form that dynamic,” Alonso said.

This semester, Alonso and Danny J. Anderson, professor or Spanish, began teaching a new course with the goal to educate students about problems and barriers Spanish speaking residents face daily and to employ students’ skills learned in the classroom to address these community needs. Alonso has used her personal experience as an immigrant from Spain as well as her professional experience as a volunteer within the Kansas Latino community, to guide her students through service learning. An educational experience in which students participate in a service activity that meets community needs, service learning is as a way to more fully understand the course curriculum. It is a teaching philosophy that 16 academic departments at the University of Kansas incorporated into their classes this spring.

Born in Galicia, Spain 28 years ago, Alonso was completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Santiago when she was presented with the opportunity to come to the University of Kansas through an exchange program. It was her uncertain employment future in Spain that prompted her to join the program as a full-time graduate student at the university and to teach classes in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

After completing her master’s degree in Spanish last year, this fall Alonso began taking classes in pursuit of a PhD in Education and this spring she began to develop and teach the course, Spanish through service learning. Alonso describes service learning as being based in the philosophy of education that in order to internalize what you are learning you must be able to experience it in real life situations.

“What would be the hope for the class is to learn the experience of being an immigrant and for them to become active in fighting discrimination in Kansas,” Alonso said.

The Center for Service Learning, opened at the university in September 2005, and this spring it offers more then 30 courses to students of 16 different fields of study. The recent influx of service-learning courses at KU and at universities nation wide indicates that professors and students agree with Alonso.

The KU Center for Service Learning is a member of the National Campus Compact, a coalition of more than 950 university and colleges and 5 million students dedicated to promoting community service, civic engagement and service-learning in higher education.

Linda Luckey, acting director of the KU Center for Service Learning, said the center was developed as part of the university’s initiative to encourage students in learning. The center works in conjunction with the global awareness program, which encourages students to gain an international experience.

When the Center for Service Learning opened this fall, its staff set out to determine if there were any existing service-learning classes at the university. They soon realized most of the faculty who were using service-learning components within their courses, had been doing so for years.

Luckey said that the center was funded to act as a resource and a support system for professors who elect to use service-learning within the classroom. There is no specific discipline behind the service-learning philosophy, but there is one specific goal.

“What we hope is part of every class is that they are engaging a real community need,” Luckey said.

As someone who emigrated to the U.S. from Spain only four years ago, Alonso remembers the hardships of having to learn English as a second language. But it are her roots in the Spanish language and her experiences that have made her effective in teaching service learning and helping other immigrants who were not presented with the same opportunities upon their arrival to Kansas.

“I think all people who speak Spanish here as their first language develop a global identity, but you lose the importance of your country’s origin,” Alonso said. “What comes first as your identity here in the U.S. is your linguistic origin, so that gives me a point of connection with people.”

Humpert, the student tutor, said that Alonso’s experiences as an immigrant and her connections with people in the Spanish speaking community has led to the appearance of countless native Spanish speakers in the Spanish through service learning course. They bring real life stories and accounts of concepts discussed in class. For example, what it is like to be a Spanish speaking immigrant in Kansas and in the U.S.

As Alonso continues her work with the service-learning course and her own course work toward the PhD in education, her end goal is to work with immigrant children. Last year she incorporated her linguistic experience with her interest of the social needs of immigrants. She worked as a social educator for the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project, a Kansas City organization that works with the KU Medical Center, to improve area children’s developmental and educational experience and thus their academic and social achievements.

She worked extensively within the Latino community and performed interventions with pregnant teenagers. The interventions begin during pre-natal, where Alonso conducted problem-solving exercises with the mother to make sure she was prepared for the new baby. Visits continue until the child is three years of age, “so we can conduct a lot of assessments of speaking skills to see if the child is developing properly,” Alonso said.

As a graduate research assistant in the Education Administration department, Alonso is currently working on a comprehensive plan for the prevention of child abuse and neglect. “It will connect the school with the social services and school programs to join all efforts to prevent this,” Alonso said.

Alonso is a perfect role model for other Spanish speaking immigrants. She shows daily how one can overcome language and social barriers and assimilate into American society, without giving up his or her cultural background. It is these attributes that make Alonso an invaluable resource to the university and to the Lawrence community.

Play video here to see service learning in action.

Learn more about the Center for Service Learning at the University of Kansas.

Read about Campus Compact, a national coalition of more than 5 million students and 950 universities dedicated to service learning.