excerpted from Minnesota's Private Colleges,

At Macalester College, service to society is an integral part of the school’s mission. This focus is evident in its multifaceted Lake Street Global Borderland project with the Minnesota Historical Society and several partners from the Lake Street area in Minneapolis. During the past three semesters, 12 Macalester classes from a wide range of departments have participated in projects to document and tell the community’s history. The Lake Street corridor is one of the most racially, ethnically and economically diverse areas of the Twin Cities and includes many immigrant and refugee communities. The work will culminate in a major historical exhibition, “Lake Street Intersections,” which will open in fall 2007 at the Minnesota History Center.

Students have been involved in the project in many ways, depending on which course they took. Laura Zeccardi, as part of the course “Public History: Making History Matter Beyond the Academy,” is researching the story of the Sears Building site and its transformation into the Midtown Global Market. She interviewed former Sears employees and neighborhood residents to get a better sense of the impact of the site. “People have many memories around Sears and when I interviewed them, they realized that their stories and history fit in a larger context.” Zeccardi says that the positive focus of this project has meant a lot to residents who’ve so often seen the Lake Street area portrayed in negative terms. She also says that delving into pubic history for the first time has been a real learning experience. “Using the History Center for primary research, learning how to do oral history and putting together an exhibit has been really great.”

Zeccardi will graduate in the spring with a double major in history and music and is already applying for graduate school in public history. “I enjoy looking at history, not just from books, but by bringing in the people who were involved.”

Other Global Borderland projects have included:

• Each student in “Women and Politics” created a display on one woman’s life story; the displays were exhibited at the Blue Moon Coffee Café.
• Students in “Frames and Methods in Performance Studies” created and performed a dance and drama at Patrick’s Cabaret based on community stories they researched.
• Students in “Consumer Nation” researched and created displays about stores and businesses along Lake Street and “Latino Politics” students researched how the recent Latino immigration to Minneapolis has transformed the street. Work from both classes was on exhibit at the Resource Center of the Americas.

When a service learning experience works well, students gain new knowledge, develop practical skills and begin to understand civic responsibility — and the community reaps the benefits of access to and relationships with academic institutions.

Link to full story: http://www.mn-colleges.org/publications/stories/2006_12/service_learning.php