For the past six years, the University-Community Academic Advising Program has helped expose a select number of first-years to service-learning options in Providence. This year, UCAAP students have been given the opportunity to further tailor their experience with the program to better match their academic and community service interests.
UCAAP is designed to "encourage first year students to embrace community participation, activism, and civic responsibility as central parts of a Brown education," according to the Swearer Center for Public Service Web site.
All first-year students are invited to apply for the program, and around 50 are selected to participate. Instead of working with a faculty member through the Curricular Advising Program, each UCAAP student is assigned to either a faculty member or a member of the Swearer Center or the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life. These mentors give students advice about academic and community-service opportunities, said UCAAP Director Alan Flam P'05, senior associate University chaplain and senior fellow at the Swearer Center.
Prior to Orientation, first-years involved in UCAAP move to campus a few days early to participate in the Institute on Service and Community. This program serves as an overview of volunteer opportunities in Providence, including those at various food shelters, and introduces students to community leaders.
"We want to introduce these students to the challenges of urban America," Flam said. "We want to say to students, 'Learn the city, take public transportation and grapple with the significant issues of the housing policy, the gaps between poverty and wealth.' That's the focus of this program."
Flam continued: "This program builds on the idealism for responsibility in the world to make it a better place. This was really developed to build on an interest that many students already have coming into a place like Brown who are already engaged in community service."
Flam noted that "a lot of students have done community service before. The job of UCAAP is to challenge people to think of it not as charity but to create change."
The program emphasizes community service work that requires students to devote a significant amount of time and energy, Flam said.
"We're not looking for one-day service projects, but for people to make commitments," he said. "UCAAP attracts students to join an impulse of activism with the thoughtfulness of deepening the knowledge of an issue."
One way UCAAP students gain an understanding of specific issues is by participating in monthly seminars that "explore dimensions of community work and that introduce students to various resources and service opportunities," according to the Swearer Center Web site.
This year, however, students are taking more control of the seminars as part of what Flam calls an effort to increase engagement.
"In order to increase the buy-in in these seminars, we made the students the architects," he said. "We choose the broad topics, and the students work in groups of seven to eight to refine these questions they need to explore."
Some of these topics are broad, but students will explore issues such as the cost of living in Rhode Island and specifically, in Providence said current UCAAP participant Natalia Nazarewicz '10.
Aliza Kreisman '10, who is also currently participating in UCAAP, said the program strongly reinforces connections between students' extracurricular activities and their academic life.
"The service work I'm doing now enriches my academic work," she said. "I'm more motivated all around."
Nazarewicz said she thinks the program is "an important introduction" to Providence. "I didn't live in a big city, and this exposed to us many different issues from homelessness to food security," she added.
"Having visited the community ... makes me feel more connected," she said. "(UCAAP students) are involved on all the levels based on lessons that we take from Providence. There are Providence-wide initiatives, Rhode Island initiatives, U.S. initiatives and world initiatives."
Both Kreisman and Nazarewicz said they have undertaken work that addresses a range of inequalities they have noticed in the community.
"I'm in Democracy Matters, and a lot of the members are UCAAP members," Kreisman said. "I am very interested in clean elections because we have to increase women minorities' representation in politics. ... There are (also) very palpable negative effects which can be seen in the lack of equal education in the city of Providence."
The UCAAP program also creates a community of like-minded people, Nazarewicz said. "I see (UCAAP students) everywhere, in all clubs and other political activist groups," she said. "Most of Orientation you aren't with people with similar interests, and this just brings us all together."
Kreisman agreed.
"I would have gravitated to the same people naturally, but this just brought us together," she said.
