Breaking Ground: The LSU Community Playground Project

The LSU Community Playground Project was formed in 1998 with regard to Biology in Engineering, a first-year, required design course in biological engineering, which is a servicelearning and communication intensive course. In this course, students are placed into groups of 3-4, and each section of the course (usually 2-3 sections) is assigned to a local public school. Students collaborate with the students, staff, and administration at the school, and sometimes the broader community, to develop “dream playground” designs at the school, with the children, the true experts at play, at the center of the design process. Each student team completes an iterative playground design and presents it through a short oral poster presentation to the school community; a detailed technical report is also submitted to the instructor. After the semester is over, the faculty member in charge of the Playground Project works with a committed student team and the school community to consolidate the designs developed for each school into one, and to procure funds to build the playground, usually through a volunteer build process. Approximately 33% of students enrolled in the course volunteer to build the playground that they designed on paper. These efforts have resulted in 28 local playgrounds being constructed that serve approximately 10,000 children every school day. In this paper, the author will (1) present the service-learning model used to develop this course, including how this model evolved over time to better meet both student and community needs, (2) share pertinent data, including community engagement indicators, student retention, and percentage of alumni who are active in community engagement, and (3) discuss major lessons learned during the course of 15 years as a community engaged faculty member.