Cathy Comstock
The ‘volatile, engaged and transformative’ power of service learning
When University of Colorado associate teaching professor Cathy Comstock, PhD, first taught a class that required her students to volunteer at a homeless shelter, she encountered skepticism and a fair amount of animosity.
One student in particular seemed to have signed up for the course with the intention of resisting the “bleeding-heart” liberal ideals of the class and its instructor. At the end of the semester, when Comstock discovered the student hadn’t completed any of the required service hours, she cut him a deal — attend the last three sessions at the shelter and he would receive a passing grade.
Years later, the student returned to tell her he was working on a photography project for a Los Angeles homeless shelter. “This is my life now,” he said.
The student had read all the material in class and none of it had affected him, but three trips to the homeless shelter changed his life.
“Years later, the student returned to tell her he was working on a photography project for a Los Angeles homeless shelter. “This is my life now,” he said.”
Most of Comstock’s students will tell you that she is unlike any other professor they’ve had before. Her classes cover meditation, the life and teachings of Gandhi, deep explorations of compassion and social violence. The subjects might sound touchy-feely, but the lessons are some of the hardest her students ever learn.
Comstock did her undergraduate work at Miami University in Ohio and received her doctorate in comparative literature at the University of Colorado-Boulder. She’s received the SOAR Teaching Award, the Green Faculty Award and the first ever national award for service learning, the Thomas Ehrlich Campus Compact Award. She helped found the Farrand Academic Program at CU-Boulder, which weaves service learning into the curriculum.
Service — or experiential — learning is the integration of community service with classroom study. Students participate in activities outside the classroom then apply those experiences to discussions and homework assignments. For example, students might volunteer at a low-income clinic as they study health care reform. Service learning was rare when Comstock pioneered the Farrand program.
“At that time you had to sort of hide it,” she says. “You felt like you were in the closet.”
“At that time you had to sort of hide it,” she says. “You felt like you were in the closet.”
Service learning is earning the respect of university administrators these days, but back then, many thought of it as a gimmick. It’s been a struggle to be taken seriously.
“Academics think it can’t be professional and be helping people at the same time,” Comstock says. “It’s not only been difficult. It’s been irritating, because people don’t see how sophisticated your methodology is.”
Through all the doubt and criticism, Comstock has remained optimistic for one reason: Service learning works.
In her essay “Literature and Service Learning: Not Strange Bedfellows,” Comstock writes: … the combination of deep concern and sudden uncertainty that these students so often experience seems to encourage an awareness of critical and textual, as well as broader cultural issues that makes the classroom a volatile, engaged and profoundly transformative place to be.
Comstock’s energy is renewed as she watches her students come to revelations, even if she doesn’t always get the results she’s looking for. She cites one of her favorite Gandhi quotes: “Full effort is full victory.”
“Giving the best you know how to give all the time,” she elaborates. “That’s nirvana.”
Originally published by The Colorado Daily