Global Citizenship, a General Education course at Minnesota School of Business, is typically the first class to expose students to the concept of service-learning, and brainstorming project ideas comes as early as the second week of the quarter at the Brooklyn Center campus. This quarter, students suggested the Hennepin County Library as a project site, which is across the street from the MSB-BC campus. Susan Glenn, Senior Librarian, appreciated the offer for help and almost immediately came up with two projects for the group of eleven students to do. Students were eager to get started on the evening of May 22 as many had never been to this library location before, and those that had been were excited to assist at a familiar place.
The first project dealt with projects for those children who spend many hours in the library over the summer. Three students worked on craft projects dealing with a bird scavenger hunt, a pixelated clock, book decorations, and small baseballs for trivia questions.
Karla Vierzba, Tina Nevala, and Anquinette Phillips working on crafts.
The second project dealt with the tagging of a book collection in the children’s section. The library is currently undergoing a major tagging called RFID, which stands for Radio Frequency Identification. Eight students worked on emptying bins of children’s books, cleaning the bins, putting RFID tags on the books, and returning the books back to the bins.
John Kleinfehn working with the RFID system.
Fortune Moua working with the RFID system.
Pheng Vang, Chansamone Thatsanaphone, and Tiffany Jacobs cleaning the bins.
At the end of the evening, Glenn told the students that the work they accomplished would have taken library staff weeks to do. This comment helped the students to understand the importance of their work. The class was happy with the outcome of their project as they realized that the librarians have other important tasks do to on a daily basis such as helping the public.
The day after the project was complete, Glenn sent an email:
“What a pleasure it was working with your students! And I can’t thank you
enough for the help your students provided on our two projects, the RFID(Radio Frequency Identification) and the summer displays and activities for youth preparation. Your students were enthusiastic, hard-working and thorough, and seemed to really enjoy contributing to help us complete these projects at the library. I would be very pleased to host a group of students again. It helps us get special projects done, enhances what we can provide the public, and helps us connect directly with adults in the community to help them learn more about the library and give back to the library and community.”
A big thank you to the students who participated and to Diane Sannes from the Friends of the Brookdale Library for connecting the school to the library.
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Great to here that students are getting involved with service learning, an exercise that integrates meaningful community service so that the learning experience of all involved will be certainly enriched.
Thanks for the comment! The students thoroughly enjoyed the project. I am proud to say that in this new quarter at our campus, another class stepped up to help with this project. They went to the library twice and helped this project get even closer to completion!