21st Century Learning Leads UC Students to Africa Over Winter Break

A group of eight University of Cincinnati students representing the student service organization Serve Beyond Cincinnati is traveling to Africa over winter break to lay pipe for a gravity-fed water system that will serve 2,000 people in Reh, Cameroon. The water system – which will collect from a fresh-water spring and flow into a storage tank – was developed by local residents and engineers. The UC students will also be examining and documenting the health, economic and physical needs of the locals.

For the students, they’ll be spending their winter break in a region that is now so hot and dry that the mud is like concrete. “We’re jumping straight from finals week into hard physical labor,” says SBC vice president John Wischmeyer, a third-year urban planning major from Mt. Sterling, Ohio. Wischmeyer is also a student in the University Honors Program for academically talented students.

“We’re hoping the village residents have made progress on digging the trenches for laying the pipe,” adds Honors student and SBC member Kara Stricker, a fourth-year fine arts education major from Forest Park.

There is no electricity or running water. Five of the students received travel funding from the University Honors Program in support of an experiential learning project that describes a “service opportunity of a lifetime,” as the students “feel privileged to have the chance to give thousands of people water.”

“I think our presence is going to serve as a morale booster for the residents and create a momentum for them to keep working after we leave,” Wischmeyer says.

The UC student group Serve Beyond Cincinnati (SBC) strives to build an emerging, civic-minded generation by providing national and international service experiences for UC students. The group has dedicated itself to overseas projects meant to improve living conditions. “We are a generation of change, and we have the power to mold the international image of American students,” Stricker says. “SBC is designed to graduate a community of leaders and global citizens who will go out into the world with a will to generate change.”

UC’s Honors Program enriches the educational experience of UC’s academically talented students through coursework and out-of-the-classroom activities – emphasizing the Honors themes of community engagement, global studies, leadership, research and creative arts.

With an emphasis on experiential learning, the University Honors Program serves more than 1,600 UC students representing every undergraduate college on campus. University Honors students on this trip will fulfill two of their requirements to graduate from the Honors program.

Experiential learning, one of UC’s 21st Century Learning initiatives, blends classroom theory with hands-on field experiences. Service learning is one example of these 21st Century Learning initiatives, which are also exemplified in cooperative education opportunities (founded at UC), internships, study abroad programs and undergraduate research.

“Experiential learning projects provide outstanding opportunities for our students to learn while trying to solve the world’s complex problems,” says Raj Mehta, director of the University Honors Program. “The University Honors program attracts the top five-to-seven percent of UC’s undergraduate students. These students are extremely talented, so this learning initiative lets students use those talents to give back to the community.”

Each of the students raised approximately $7,000 for a total of $56,000 total to pay for travel and for supplies to build the water system. “Our main job was to support fundraising for the project, because that’s one thing that the people in the village are not able to do,” Stricker says.

Students started planning and fundraising for the trip in January 2008. The Honors students’ travel costs are also supported by $5,000 in experiential learning grants from the University Honors Program.

The group will be departing Cincinnati on Dec. 12 and returning on Dec. 30. The students will be documenting the trip on video and plan to produce a documentary in partnership with two students majoring in UC’s electronic media division in the College- Conservatory of Music (CCM).

UC’s Proudly Cincinnati Campaign Supports 21st Century Learning

Serve Beyond Cincinnati Web site

University Honors Program Web site