Senior Capstone Project: Service and Learning

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Senior Capstone Project Service and Learning

• Taylor University
• Social Work Department
• Cathy Harner PhD, Paul Susan MSW

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Integrative Social Work Seminar

• During January Term
• Coursework has been completed
• Prior to fulltime spring senior practicum
• Two major components
• -Comprehensive exams
• -Senior Trip

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Course Objectives

• Integrate and apply knowledge, values, and skills
  base to an experience of immersion and service in
  an unfamiliar community
• Demonstrate professionalism and collaboration
• Demonstrate problem solving, creative thinking,
  conflict management, commitment to service
• Demonstrate tolerance for variations based on
  age, culture, gender, religion, sexual
  orientation, or any other dimensions of difference

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Course Objectives (cont.)

• Develop an awareness of self that utilizes
  strengths and works on limitations
• Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the
  knowledge, values, and skills base of generalist
  social work practice
• Understand and apply the meaning of being a
  Christian global citizen

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Comprehensive Exams
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Senior Trip

• Approximately 10 day trip, in an unfamiliar area
• Live communally, often in churches
• Besides doing physical labor cleanup, find
  settings to use social work skills, knowledge
• -People skills- interviewing, active
  listening, showing empathy support, basic
  counseling
• -Skills in assessment, problem solving, making
  referrals, data collection, casework

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Holly Hill/Daytona Beach, Florida

• Stay at a local church with an emphasis on
  community outreach and assistance
• Participate in church activities and projects
• Visit various social service agencies for tours,
  orientation to their work and then carry out
  projects with them

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Holly Hill/Daytona Beach (cont.)
Labor Social Work Tasks

• Sort/pack clothing and supplies to send to Haiti
• Cleanup after hurricanes
• Painting
• Outdoor cleanup and landscaping
• Prepare meals for single moms, children, and
  homeless shelters

• Serve as staff/counselors for youth events
• Lead groups for single moms and children
• Meet with homeless for support/problem solving
• Review/sort files and videos of child abuse
  testimony and child counseling

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New York City after 9/11-Salvation Army
Labor Social Work Tasks

• Prepared and served meals to firemen, police, and
  other personnel sorting through World Trade
  Center debris at Fresh Kills landfill on Staten
  Island

• Informally met with these personnel to help
  process their experiences and provide support

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Gulfport/Biloxi, MS, 2006-UMCOR
Labor Social Work Tasks

• Gutted damaged houses. Removed flooring, nails,
  drywall, furnishings, and cleaned yards of debris
• Sorted and organized relief supplies in warehouse

• Did door to door survey of East Biloxi
  residents. Gathered data on health, housing,
  insurance, employment, income, emotional state,
  etc.
• Worked on computer program for recording and
  processing the data

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Important Elements of the Trip

• Daily journaling-events of the day, reactions and
  feelings, and relation to the field of social
  work
• Regular group meetings for processing the
  experience, every other day is good
• Importance of flexibility (modeled by faculty)
• Mix work groups regularly
• Two group leaders

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Important Elements (cont.)

• Benefits of doing this as a course are that you
  can require the students to try things outside of
  their comfort zones
• Benefits of limiting the trip to senior majors in
  your department is that you have an established
  relationship with students already competent in
  the field and you can focus on issues especially
  relevant to the discipline

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Additional Observations

• Living, cooking, and working together is part of
  the growth experience
• Selecting your sponsoring agency should be based
  on the needs of your specific discipline
• Disaster relief, like 9/11 and Katrina, provides
  an immediacy and fascination factor for all of
  us but it is harder to plan and requires much
  more flexibility