SENCERing Creates Informed, Engaged Student Citizens
Garon Smith, a professor in the chemistry department, goes by the name of “G.Wiz” (short for “Garon the Wizard”) with students. Why the need for the alias? “I’ve found it breaks down the formality of the classroom so the students feel they can talk to me. I’d rather be seen as a coach than as a lecturer,” he says.
And Smith is breaking down more barriers than just those between students and teacher. His teaching, or “coaching,” breaks down the barriers between theory and practice and between knowing and doing. It encourages students to try to solve current, complex, unsolved public issues by coupling the science they’ve learned with the exercising of their rights as citizens to help effect public policy changes.
“Even as an environmental scientist, I realized early on that understanding the science behind a problem doesn’t solve it. There are limitations to what science can do,” Smith says. “When science becomes relevant to people’s lives and they participate in the process of using science to affect policy, then we can solve problems—even big problems. I want to ensure there are voices, comfortable with science, whenever community discussions occur. I work toward this goal in making my students scientifically competent civic agents.”
How does he do it?
Flashback
Back in the early 1990s, after Smith had worked for several years for policy makers and governments as an adviser on scientific issues, he became disappointed at how little public participation there was in the formation of public policy. After his teaching career began at UM in 1991, he devised a system through which students could earn extra credit for participating in activities such as after-school mentoring of K-12 students, attending City Council meetings, and attending meetings of—for example—the health, air, and water boards in Missoula.
The extra credit carrot worked.
Then in 2002 Smith attended a workshop discussing the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) SENCER program (Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities). At the workshop, Smith told NSF representatives what he was already doing—offering extra credit “to bribe students into getting involved in their community”—and was told that NSF had never seen a successful model of the kind Smith had produced. They urged him to apply for NSF funding. Smith did, and received an NSF grant to implement SENCER at UM. Although approximately 180 institutions nationwide now participate in the program, Smith was one of the program’s pioneers and now serves as one of only 16 SENCER Senior Associates nationwide.
Interdisciplinary Approaches and Blending of Theory and Practice Mirror Life in the Real World
UM’s SENCER project has three main objectives:
• to engage our students in local environmental issues so they become part of the policy formulating process;
• to empower our students to take action on national and global environmental issues; and
• to maintain course content needs as required by department expectations.
Lower-division students taking the SENCER curriculum (about 600 per year) take Smith’s chemistry course. A subset co-enroll in an environmental science and a world geography course as well. They then meet to link course content, discuss social issues of relevance to the courses, discuss and participate in local issues relevant to the course, and plan and implement small-scale fundraisers for local and global action. Students decide as a group which organizations will receive the funds raised.
Outside of this classroom work, civic involvement occurs at a number of levels. Extra credit is given to students who attend meetings or public hearings to watch science, health and environmental policy being made. They get more points if they testify, send in written comments or submit a letter to the editor of our local paper. Extra credit is also given for tutoring or mentoring local K-12 students. The community service is so personally satisfying that many of the student volunteers continue this work in subsequent semesters.
For example, one former student, Shaun Biddle, received extra credit for signing a petition (prepared by Smith) at a Cenex gas station that saluted Cenex in its willingness to provide a B20 biodiesel blend in Missoula—a blend of gasoline more environmentally friendly than most others. According to Biddle, “each time I’d go to Cenex and sign the petition, I’d have a conversation with the clerk about it. he clerk usually wouldn’t know anything about biodiesel or its importance so we’d start talking about that. The clerks I talked to over the months were surprised and impressed by what I told them. And I continue to buy my gas there even now.”
Biddle muses that “G. Wiz’s community service focus encourages a sense of connectedness about why we become educated in the first place. We learn, then we do what we learn (and help other people in the process)—instead of just regurgitating what we’ve studied. He has encouraged me to be involved and stay connected to the community, information I’ve learned, and to life in general—instead of just coming to a big lecture hall, turning in my work, and leaving. Some students may not even appreciate the importance of this until later in their lives. But I believe—as a 48-year-old non-traditional student who has been around—that these are the experiences that shape us.”
According to Holly Mylander, a current CHEM 151 student who volunteers as an after-school mentor for grade school kids, using community service as a basis for extra credit “creates an incentive to work harder, in class and in life. It gives an incentive for doing better in the course and knowing you’re helping others have better lives, and that you’re doing something that matters. A good majority of my classmates do the tutoring. They like the extra credit, and they really like the tutoring too.”
What does this have to do with learning chemistry?
Smith is careful to point out that the community service does not cut into class time and that course content has not been diminished. Also, it takes a rather large number of extra credit points to significantly affect a grade. But Smith observes that once students have invested in civic activities, they become more engaged in course material to protect the extra credit points they have “banked.”
They work harder and they learn more. During the Fall 2003 semester, students averaged 12.2 extra credit points. At 3 points per hour, Smith’s 381 participating students contributed 1,549 hours of out-of-class time on their civic engagement activities. That’s 4,647 points!
What do the students think about this new teaching paradigm?
One student, Cathy Crane, shared her thoughts about the civic-action options in an unsolicited e-mail to Smith: “I also really enjoy the way you use extra credit. It encourages people to pull their heads out of the sand, out of their books, out of televisions, and out of their ‘you-knowwhats’ in order to do something productive. Very inspirational. Thanks again.”
