A human service studies course has received national recognition from Learning By Giving Foundation and additional funding for class projects.
The work of Elon human service studies students related to a grant from the Learning by Giving Foundation has received national recognition — and additional funding.
In 2012, Bud Warner, associate professor of human service studies, received a grant from Doris Buffett’s Learning By Giving Foundation to enhance the teaching of philanthropy in HSS 411 Designing and Assessing Human Service Programs.
Elon University was selected as one of only 43 colleges and universities in the country to receive this grant. Through this grant, HSS students work with local agencies to create grant proposals and then serve as a funding board to award real money to support community programs. To date, the students in these classes have awarded $50,000 of Learning By Giving funding into the Burlington/Alamance County community.
This past fall, Learning By Giving added a new component to the grant. Classes were asked to have students create blogs about their courses, identifying important learning and the processes through which classes made decisions about their philanthropy. Human Service Studies major Dani Baker ’17 took on this task and working with her classmates created Elon’s blog, http://learningbygivingatelon.blogspot.com/.
Staff at the Learning By Giving Foundation reviewed all the blogs, and selected Elon’s for second place in a national competition, and granted an additional $3,000 for the students to award to agencies of their choice. The plan is to split the additional funding between the two programs supported by the fall HSS 411 class, Classroom Closet, which is a free teaching supplies store, and Positive Attitude Youth Center’s new high school program.