Letter From the Editor for JEE Issue 46(3)

Abstract

I am pleased to share with you the six articles which comprise this issue of the Journal of Experiential Education. Together, these articles examine service learning, University–community partnerships, equine-facilitated psychotherapy, and educational resources to explore climate change. The first two of these articles address service learning in different contexts. In “Bridges to Civic Health: Enhancing Shared Service-Learning Collaboration in Nursing and History,” Sundberg and Koehler explore a collaboration between a nursing undergraduate course and a history undergraduate course. Both courses had service-learning components and focused on the history or health consequences of lead pollution and exposure. The nursing course presented the social determinants of health through practical training (focused on lead exposure), while the history course introduced students to structural inequities in public health by focusing on the history of lead exposures. The initial, ad hoc collaboration between the two faculty members led to changes in the courses to encourage peer-to-peer learning and engagement between students in both courses. The authors present their qualitative analysis of student reflections, emphasizing the importance of exploring convergences between disciplines and developing transdisciplinary partnerships within higher education settings like theirs. The second of the service-learning-focused articles is “‘Real Students Helping Others’: Student Reflections on a Research-based Service Learning Project in a Gender and Victimization Course.” In this article, Boppre, Reed, and Belisle investigate student outcomes from a research-based service-learning project within a campus community. Utilizing a feminist and trauma-informed pedagogical lens, the authors qualitatively examine how one group of students experienced the creation and dissemination of a campus survey to explore the broader campus students’ experiences of victimization, perceptions of campus safety, and knowledge of campus resources. The authors conclude, “This project highlights the potential for researchbased service-learning to be used as a survivor-centered format that can empower students, provide hands-on skills, and build critical thinking.” Two other articles investigate University–community partnerships. In “Intergenerational, Community-based Learning and Exercise Science Student Perceptions of Classroom Community,” Crawley and Crawley use a mixed methods approach to compare undergraduate exercise science students’ perceptions of an intergenerational, community-based learning environment to a traditional learning Editorial