Undergraduate Journal of Service Learning & Community-Based Research

Reflecting on Service: The Common Denominator

Alec Landau — 2024-01-08

Despite good intentions, some service projects do not have the same results as intended. The key difference maker that explains the results of the success is community collaboration. I was fortunate enough to make this realization through formal service education which propelled the proper way to complete and structure future projects, even if those decisions were not always conscious. Although I have this understanding now, the process of my reflection through each service experience is explored throughout the paper. This reflection resulted in the foundation of my own nonprofit, Offering of Hope which has grown to encompass 7 branches in 5 states resulting in community engagement between communities and pre-health undergraduate and professional students across the country.

Implementing a Wellness Program with Trenton Youth: Reflections about Undergraduate Professional Development in the Context of Community Engaged Research

Summer Monasterial — 2024-01-08

This reflective essay explores the intersection of undergraduate community psychology-based experiences and the urgent issue of youth mental health. Student reflections in the essay delve into the benefits of community psychology engagement for undergraduates, emphasizing critical thinking about social issues, increased awareness of inequities, and the cultivation of skills for advocating social change. It highlights the significance of experiential learning in translating theoretical knowledge into practical competence.

The essay describes the Research on Engagement, Adjustment, and Community Health (REACH) lab's initiative to address the youth mental health crisis in Trenton. Collaborating with UrbanPromise Trenton (UPT), the REACH lab created a wellness intervention program, incorporating Dr. Laurie Santos's "The Science of Well-Being" course framework, modified to suit the UPT context.

Reflecting on this experience, the essay underscores the significance of aligning community engagement with youth well-being, providing a framework for future endeavors. It offers insights into the role of undergraduate engagement in addressing critical social issues and nurturing socially responsible careers.

Stigma Reduction on Reproductive Health

Emma Schueren — 2024-01-08

Women who seek abortion services face a myriad of barriers, stigma being one of the most
prominent. Stigma can consist of impersonal structural barriers such as laws and regulations, or it
can be as intimate as community beliefs and interpersonal reactions. These kinds of stigma can
cause emotional, financial, and psychological distress, and a feeling of isolation. To reduce
stigma, a web based interactive narrative was created as an abortion stigma reduction
intervention. Once created, a study was conducted to gather data on the feasibility of the
narrative. The aim of this paper is to analyze the feasibility of an abortion stigma based
interactive narrative. Participants (n=45) involved in this study were college students taking a
Public Health course, and a mixed methods survey was used to collect data after participants
played the interactive narrative. Students were surprised to learn about cost/finances, sixty-eight
percent felt that they learned a lot from the interactive narrative, and their main takeaway from
the narrative was that abortion stigma is more prevalent in nontraditional ways than was
originally thought. Based on the findings, the intervention was found to be promising and
feasible. The results gathered will be used for process evaluation to guide future improvements.

The Community’s Perspective on Mentorship through Service-Learning: A Qualitative Analysis

Mohini Vadalia — 2024-01-08

Service-learning (SL) experiences are increasing in popularity within primary schools as well as post-secondary educational institutions. Youth tutoring and mentorship can be considered beneficial experiences for both SL students providing the service and the community partner (CP) students receiving the service. Although a significant aspect of SL is geared towards the CP, there is a lack of research considering the perspectives of the CP regarding SL. This narrative study aims to address this gap in knowledge by determining the extent to which SL can improve the CP students’ self-efficacy, academic achievement, and cognitive engagement and how SL can be improved in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Intake surveys and structured interviews were conducted with Cosumnes Oaks High School CP students in a Medical Careers Pathway in the Sacramento, CA region. Responses shed light on how engagement with SL affects these students and gauge how the SL curriculum can be better adapted to meet their needs. We also explored the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic affected CP students’ academic experience and how they believe SL modalities can be adapted based on the global pandemic. Based on the study, three themes were identified to describe the benefits from SL for the CP students and to modify SL to better suit the needs of the student based on their experiences from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The results from this study suggest that students believe SL mentorship has the potential to provide mentors who are able to support them, improve their academic achievement, and connect to others from different backgrounds/ experiences. The themes generated by this study will benefit educators who adopt SL into their curriculum and help CP students receive SL mentorship that is catered to their needs and fosters their growth. Within the research community, this study will also serve as a model to inform future SL research study designs to put a greater emphasis on the CP’s perspective.

Evaluating the Normative View on Parental Involvement

Dominic Guidry — 2024-01-08

Abstract:

While there is plenty of research around the benefits of parental involvement in schools and after-school programs, there is a lack of literature and examination into the negative effects of enforced parental involvement at this institutional level—particularly in cases where parents are triggers to youth who carry a history of trauma. In these cases, parental involvement may exacerbate the harmful effects of trauma and stress for youth. Though there need to be larger, wider-scoped studies about this concern, I attempt to address the problem through a case study conducted at Mar Vista Family Center. In their mission, the enforcement of parental involvement is explicitly detailed through their ‘Shared Responsibility Model’. Data of this study are collected using evaluative interviews and analytic memos. After five months, I found that the intention for creating safety centered parents, and that consideration around trauma-informed programming is deficient. There was no evidential data showing that youth at the center, who interact with parents, were dealing with trauma; however, the limitations of my study—namely, the absence of data from youth participants—prevented such deductions. Therefore, I infer that there has been significant negligence to understand this problem in both research and the institutional setting, and that broad applications of parental involvement as a fail-safe solution for most youth, is still potentially harmful for some. I conclude that youth-centered spaces and organizations ought to focus on creating safe spaces with the input of youth and with care around every experience.

List of Contributors:

Dominic Guidry, main author

dominicguidry@gmail.com

Dr. Douglas Barrera, research advisor

dbarrera@college.ucla.edu

Supporting Agencies:

University of California, Los Angeles

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