Megan Halteman Zwart

Megan Halteman Zwart is an associate professor in the department of philosophy at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. She has found her experiential learning courses to be the most rewarding of her career.

1. Why did you choose to ask students to do civic engagement projects?

I teach a class entitled Social Justice which focuses on questions of food ethics. We consider justice for humans, animals, and the environment, tracing the path of our food from farm to plate. We look at the lives and work of farm workers who pick produce and low-wage workers in food service; study the treatment of animals in factory farming and smaller-scale farming; notice the environmental impact of our food choices; and ultimately consider whether we should modify our behaviors based on obligations to other humans, non-human animals, and the environment.

After teaching this course several times without an experiential learning component, I realized two things: First, students were often persuaded by philosophical arguments, but even the strongest arguments often failed to produce conviction or incentive for behavior modification. Second, students were often so overwhelmed by the scope of the problems that they felt defeated in the face of staggering injustice.

Adding engagement with local food justice activists addressed both these concerns by allowing students to participate in potentially transformative experiences, and by spotlighting local organizations that are responding to injustice and providing concrete opportunities for student engagement.

 

2. What project(s) do your students do?

As a class, we take five field trips during class time. Students then choose one of the organizations we visit and spend eight hours of service learning outside of class at this placement. We visit a Catholic Worker ministry that runs a low-cost food co-op in a food desert and offers hospitality to homeless members of our community; the Northern Indiana Food Bank and food pantry; an urban farm that supports dozens of satellite community gardens in near-by food deserts; and a sustainable farm that features wetland and prairie restoration, wind power, a CSA and small-scale animal agriculture. Finally, we share a meal together off campus.

Student service varies by organization, but in the past they have shared meals with homeless community members; prepared low-cost, healthy food to sell in a co-op; burned large swaths of prairie; helped deliver baby goats; planted, weeded and harvested vegetables; helped shoppers at a food pantry; and sorted food for children who experience food insecurity.

Students write journal entries throughout the semester, reflecting on the field trips and service learning and connecting these experiences to the readings and class discussions. Their final project asks them to develop a concrete plan for addressing a particular injustice within the food system. I encourage them to consider an issue that fits with their service placement, and to include reflection on their service learning in the action plan.

 

5. What do you think students gain from doing this civic engagement?

My impression from journals, class discussions, and evaluations is that students believe the service learning and field trips enhance their understanding of the issues and arguments, and also have a transformative effect on their attitudes and actions. For example, this semester a student shared that she found an argument for animal rights intellectually persuasive, but it wasn’t until she saw a mother goat’s concern for her newborn kid that her attitudes towards animals were transformed: seeing the mother’s care for her offspring convinced her of the argument’s claim that many animals care about what happens to them.

Students’ written reflections on the course support the impression that they recognize the value of integrating readings, class discussions and experiential learning (students gave me permission to share anonymously):

• ‘Though I had originally anticipated that some philosophical argument would be the final piece that swayed me towards veganism, it was my service-learning experiences along with some of the environmental factors we discussed that really made me reevaluate my diet.”
• ‘I do not exaggerate when I say that this course has meaningfully changed my life….While I’ve had desire for the good my whole life, I feel like this course gave me a voice and a direction with where that desire can put its feet to the ground and become action.’
• ‘From the field trips to the videos we watched, I feel that everything I learned was enhanced and made clear in my mind. I also enjoyed most of our readings, however the experiential learning part combined with the graphic movies were much more effective in leaving an impression on me…I constantly find myself connecting this course to my everyday life and I have new aspirations to make people aware of the food related issues in our society.’

 

6. What does the civic engagement project offer to wider communities?

Our community partners have been very positive about their experiences with our students. Several students have maintained relationships with community partners as interns or volunteers. Others brought friends who are not in the class to participate in service, raising the profile of our community partners among those at Saint Mary’s. I think a further value of experiential learning—both field trips and service learning—is that it gets students into the community, which is especially important in a residential campus where many students may hardly leave campus otherwise. Finally, equipping students with skills and knowledge about how to plug into existing organizations will benefit any community the students eventually find themselves in, by helping them become engaged and informed citizens.

 

7. If someone wanted to do these projects at their own institution, what steps or resources would you recommend?

It is definitely easier to implement experiential learning if one’s institution is supportive. I received a grant to integrate the experiential learning portion of the class, which was the incentive I needed to get started. I recommend taking advantage of any institutional support you can get, including grants and help from designated support staff. It can also be helpful to capitalize on existing relationships or partnerships between the college and community partners.

I have found it very important to include assignments that require students to reflect on their experiences and to connect class discussion and reading to the experiences. Experiences and reflections should be incentivized to a sufficient degree to show students that this is an integral part of the course, not and ‘add-on’ or an optional component. Now that I interweave service learning throughout the class, students rarely fail to complete this component.

 

8. What do you like about teaching this way?

There is no question that teaching with experiential learning presents some challenges that traditional philosophy classes do not. For instance, the instructor has less control of the course experience, some things don’t go as planned, community partners may change leadership or availability, and a lot more legwork is required at the beginning of each semester to ensure that everything is in place for a successful course run.

However, I have found my experiential learning classes are the most rewarding of my teaching career and certainly the most engaging for students. One of the most important roles for philosophy is to facilitate the pursuit of a transformed life in which one’s beliefs and actions move towards alignment. Experiential learning illustrates this role for philosophy, highlighting the transformative effect lived philosophy can have on students’ lives, attitudes, and habits.

 

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