Welcome to the Key Center for Community Citizenship and Service Learning!

The Key Center seeks to help UNCA faculty, students and staff develop long-term partnerships with local organizations and residents to identify and work on issues of importance to them -- and thereby promote the wellbeing of the Asheville area and its people.  This gives students not only an opportunity to help the community, but also a chance to experience enriching, rigorous applications of the theories, research and practice they encounter in their studies.   

This vision is based in research, which has demonstrated that:

Service learning is at its best when professors are deeply involved in long-term collaborations in which they work together with the community to identify issues to work on (Jacoby, 2003)

Community partners want such collaborations (Stoecker & Tryon, 2009).

If you are a community member, professor or student who is interested in exploring service learning, please contact us at 251-6400 or via e-mail.  We would like to work with you.  

Contact us

 

Highsmith Union, Room 248
CPO# 1200, UNCA

Asheville, NC 28804
828/251-6400


e-mail the Key Center


Staff

 

Joseph Berryhill, Key Center Professor

Cale Burrell, AmeriCorps member

Lauren Avots, intern.

UNCA students present service-learning work at statewide conference

Four UNCA students -- Dan Casciato, Amanda Sims, Sherydan Smith, and Kendra Sylver -- presented their ongoing work with Children First at the 2009 North Carolina Campus Compact Student Conference at Western Carolina University on November 7.  Their presentation, titled, Bringing people together within a diverse community, told of their research to help a multicultural neighborhood consider options for overcoming separation.

Students doing in-depth or innovative service-learning projects should consider next year's conference, to be held in the central part of the state.

 

 

Visit us in our new location

We have moved, but not far.  We're now in Room 248 of the Highsmith Union -- almost directly across the hall from our old offices.  If you enter the main entrance on the second floor, we are the first office on the left after you pass the information desk. 

Fall Service Learning Fair Thursday Nov. 12

Representatives from Asheville non-profit organizations will be at Alumni Hall in the Highsmith Union from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Thursday November 12.  You can learn about how to get involved and start making a difference on issues ranging from children's wellbeing to the environmental protection, either for the short term or long term (as in a career).

Want to publish your efforts in service learning?

Partnerships: A Journal of Service- Learning and Civic Engagement sponsored by North Carolina Campus Compact is announcing a new call for articles for the upcoming year (2010).  Partnerships will publish two volumes each year with the deadline for Winter 2010 publication - December 21, 2009. Partnerships is peer reviewed and recognizes that successful engaged learning depends on effective partnerships between students, faculty, community agencies, administrators, disciplines, and more.  Further, Partnerships focuses on how theories and practices can inform and improve such partnerships, connections, and collaborations.  Studies co-authored by faculty, students, and/or community partners; or examining practices across disciplines or campuses; or exploring international networks are all encouraged.

 
Manuscript Submission Guidelines for articles are located here.