What Makes A Successful Service Learning Project For Freshman Engineers

Service learning can be a valuable educational tool for freshman engineers which helps to develop their sense of value and direction, teaches team dynamics and professional communication skills, and engages the students in the community surrounding their university. A fundamental challenge in developing a successful and rewarding experience for each student is the identification of appropriate community partners and projects. As freshmen engineers, the skill set of the students is limited; however the tendency is to select projects which are clearly marked as engineering-related, often resulting in an unattainable goal, unhappy community partners and discouraged students. .To prevent this end result, the focus of the experience should not be on the specifics of the project but rather the process and skills required to solve a problem which meets the needs of and satisfies the community partner. In this paper, we will discuss our experiences in project selection for a service learning course offered to second semester freshman engineering students at the University of Pittsburgh. The focus of the paper will be on the challenges in developing and maintaining community partner relationships, our experiences in identifying projects for the course, and examples of projects which resulted in both positive and negative experiences for either the students or the community partners.