By Sarah Foote

By graduation, a typical Yale student has devoted thousands of hours to both studies and extracurricular community service. For most Elis, these two pursuits remain apart: Students attend class during the day and volunteer for outside organizations on their own time. But an innovative program known as the Community Based Learning Initiative is blurring this distinction by offering the unique opportunity to earn course credit for community service research. This semester, two Yale College courses are offering Community Based Learning sections: “Inequality in American Democracy” with Jacob Hacker and “New Haven after Urban Renewal” with Paul Bass, JE ’82.

The Initiative was launched in 1997, when Princeton University received a grant to provide service-minded students with the opportunity to apply knowledge gleaned from their coursework to real-world situations. Instead of engaging in traditional volunteer work, though, Community Based Learning students work with organizations to conduct research projects that the program has identified as pertinent to students’ studies, as well. Princeton’s inventive idea proved infectious, and in the decade since its birth, the Community Based Learning Initiative has grown to include numerous universities from across the nation; Yale joined their ranks in 2003.

Full article: http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Article=5177