Writing the Community: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Composition

The first volume in AAHE and Campus Compact’s series on service-learning in the disciplines, the book discusses the microrevolution in college-level Composition through service-learning. The essays in this volume show why service-learning and communication are a natural pairing and give a background on the relationship between service-learning and communication with maps to suggest where it should go in the future.

Linda Adler-Kassner is a teaching specialist in composition and the writ­ing program codirector at the University of Minnesota-General College, where she regularly teaches service-learning courses. Her interest in the relationship between student and academic literacies has led her to pub­lish articles about service-learning as well as composition and literacy history. In the fall of 1997, she will join the faculty at the University of Michigan-Dearborn as assistant professor of composition and rhetoric. Robert Crooks teaches composition and also literary, film, and communi­cation theory at Bentley College. An associate professor of English, he has incorporated service-learning projects into a number of different courses and has presented a paper on Service-Leaming, Composition, and Cultural Studies at CCCC. Ann Watters is a lecturer in the English department at Stanford University, where she has directed the Program in Writing and Critical Thinking and currently serves as associate director. A member of the Invisible College of educators involved in service-learning, she cofounded Stanford's Community Service Writing Project. She has co-authored and edited five books, including Writing for Change and Guide for Change, two textbooks for college composition courses that integrate service-learning.