Service on the 40 Acres

Today was a busy day at the University of Texas at Austin.

First, the 40+ acres saw almost 50,000 new faces as part of the University's "Explore UT" event. This is an annual event which attracts students, teachers and parents from all over the state of Texas ranging from the very young to high school age youth, meant to introduce them to college. Different schools, programs and activities across campus plan events to engage, entertain, and enlighten parents, kids, and teachers and to welcome them to the University as potential future members. The LBJ School of Public Affairs invited visitors to make buttons, with an eye towards the elections and political expression throughout the year. (There was also a popcorn machine, which quite honestly delighted the graduate volunteers almost as much as the visiting students.)

For some reason, today's activities struck me more than I anticipated, especially given that it was a relatively short event (only one day). We got to watch service learning in action. It had many of the elements of an ideal service experience: it was face to face, it was intergenerational, it was topical. I cannot count how many Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton buttons I made. And there were definitely more than a few buttons with "[insert child's name here] for Senate" or "President". There were also several that said, "[insert child's name here] is a Southside gangster for life" and the one I refused to make: "Dominique Rodriguez is ugly." But that's the point. We talked about it. We interacted. I made 4 buttons for myself.

Moreover, the parking lots were filled with school buses and charter buses. Several chaperones said they had driven 5 or 6 hours, on a bus, to come to the event. To me, this means that educators understand the value of service learning, are willing to take the time for it, but need some help. The University, as a separate institution, provided valuable resources for the experience; resources above and beyond what primary and secondary educational institutions are able to provide.

I could go on and on about the day, but my shoulder hurts from operating the button machine, so I'll turn to another event on campus today:

The Center for Ethical Leadership at the LBJ School is also holding its annual leadership conference this weekend. The conference is designed to introduce undergraduate students from across the country to critical leadership education. There are distinguished speakers, breakout sessions and activities intended to provoke students to think about effective and ethical leadership, and hopefully be inspired to practice it at their own institutions and throughout their lives. One of the speakers this morning was Dr. Chris Meyers Asch, who, with his colleague Shawn Raymond, is leading the effort to start the U.S. Public Service Academy.

His talk was a sort of quick and dirty narrative about motivations to civic service, types of service and, of course, why we should create an academy modeled on the military service academies to train people to serve. He spoke about the need to create a national "mission" to serve, about service as a means of transmitting values and morals, and about education as a public good. He highlighted the point that "expectations matter," in the classroom and also as a society. He was engaging and inspiring, but also substantive in his prescription for an entirely new institution to make service to this country a goal of America's best and brightest young people.

Tomorrow, I'll blog on the questions I asked about the next policy steps for the Academy and the distinctions between public service, social entrepreneurship, and community leadership.