Service Learning asks for increase in funds

The Associated Student of Boise State University Senate heard from Kara Brascia and Randy Johnson from BSU Service Learning, an organization on campus that relates course work to real-life experiences, while meeting a community need. The program assists schools with students going into the education field that cannot provide adequate care. Service Learning also has classes in: biology, social work, psychology, English, nursing, education and others.”The experience you get from Service Learning classes will stay with you, not just through that class and your academic career, but through your entire life,” Johnson said. The program, which is 90 percent funded by student fees, is asking for a student fee increase of $1.90 per student in the 2006-07 school year. The increase would bring the total given to SL to $4.40 per student per semester.According to Brascia, when the program was initiated in 1988, 150 students were in the program. There are now around 1,600. The fee would allow SL to double the number of students it could sustain.Without the fee increase, SL would either have to put a cap on the number of programs it can sustain, or reduce the amount of funding to certain programs and classes.The classes SL offers are classes that students can take to earn credit toward graduation. SL currently offers $30,000 in scholarships to BSU students. Americorps, a group that works with SL has offered to double that number.Johnson quoted Mahatma Ghandi in his address to the Senate, “We must be the change we want to see in the world,” Johnson said. “With your support, hopefully we can be the kind of change we’d like to be.”The resolution to support the Service Learning program was placed with the Budget and Finance committee, but will likely be put into a spreadsheet along with all the other requests for raises in student fees. The ultimate decision of whether to give Service Learning their fee increase lies with Boise State’s administration during fee increase hearings. The hearings are open to the public and will begin on Thursday, Feb. 16 at 1 p.m.

Dustin Lapray
Arbiter staff

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