Paradise Valley Community College initiated service learning in fall, 1998. Service learning is housed in the Student Life Center and coordinated by the director of student life. The Center provides support to PVCC faculty who incorporate service learning in their classes, identifies community agencies with a need for volunteers, and links faculty and students with appropriate agencies and service opportunities.

Realizing that volunteer service, with its variety of concrete, "real-life" experiences enhances academic, theoretical concepts and that the application of theoretical concepts in concrete life situations enhances the service experience, faculty strive to create linkages through reflection activities, journals, small group discussions and planning consultations between students and community members.

Service learning continues to grow as a vital component in the college's learner centered environment. During the initial semester, in fall, 1988, less than ten students involved themselves in service learning. By spring, 1999, more than eighty students participated. In spring 2000, twenty-one full time and adjunct faculty were actively involved in the program; student enrollments exceeded 400 participants.

In addition to students engaged in volunteer projects for academic credit, all student clubs and the community college honorary fraternity, Phi Theta Kappa, include service learning based projects at the center of their activities.

Participation in volunteer work for agencies as diverse as the Paradise Valley Food Bank and the Thomas J. Pappas School for Homeless Children promotes not only academic and experiential learning but vital interpersonal links between the college and members of the community at large.

On an international scale, involvement with La Esperanza Orphanage in Puerto Penasco, Sonora, Mexico and La Casa Hogar, a school for children from dysfunctional familes in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico is providing seeds for the establishment of service learning projects specifically fitted to the schedules, finances, and needs of PVCC's student body while increasing awareness of the global community and the necessity for commitment to an understanding of diversity and multiculturalism.

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