Toward a Model for Service-learning in Advanced Writing Classrooms:

Cultivating Interdisciplinary Student Stakeholders

Abstract

This paper explores service-learning as a mode of cultivating student stakeholders in university education. Previous studies have examined increasing student engagement through experiential learning, writing across the curriculum, and recognizing the interdisciplinarity of general education classrooms, but few have brought these elements into conversation as contexts that might foster students’ sense of ownership of their education. While students are recipients of carefully planned faculty-designed curricula, this study suggests that cross-curricular programs, such as writing in the disciplines, could benefit from student input given their direct experience of writing assignments and expectations in multiple classroom environments. This study investigates, in hybrid mode (intersectional pedagogy and auto-ethnographic case study), a plan aimed at developing cross-campus knowledge about writing instruction through an inter-campus service-learning project. The featured project underscores the importance of experiential learning that enhances student estimation of writing as a mode of learning, involves students in the evaluation of campus writing curricula, and develops a sense of writing as highly valuable to university education and integral to all fields in subsequent professional lives.