Connecting Past and Present (Service Learning in the Disciplines)

The question that animates volume, 16th in the Service-Learning in the Disciplines Series, is: Why connect service-learning to history courses? The contributors answer that question in different ways and illustrate and highlight a diversity of historical approaches and interpretations. All agree, however, that they do their jobs better as teachers (and in some cases as researchers) by engaging their students in service-learning. An interesting read with a compelling case for the importance of history and how service-learning can improve the historian’s craft.

Bill M. Donovan is associate professor of history at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a specialist in early modem Atlantic history and the history of the Portuguese Empire. He has been a Fulbright Fellow to Brazil and a 1997 Vasco da Gama Lecturer sponsored by the Portuguese Commission on the Discoveries. His publications include the award­winning article Gypsies in Early Modem Portugal and Changing Conceptions of Social Deviancy and essays on early modem crime, immi­gration, and trade. Ira Harkavy is director of the Center for Community Partnerships and associate vice president at the University of Pennsylvania. He teaches in the departments of history, urban studies, and city and regional planning, and is executive editor of Universities and Community Schools. The West Philadelphia Improvement Corps (WEPIC), a 15-year partnership to create university-assisted community schools that connect the University of Pennsylvania and the West Philadelphia community, emerged and devel­oped from seminars and research projects he directs with other colleagues at Penn.