ABSTRACT
For the past few years I have worked with a group of colleagues at Vanderbilt University to promote service-learning on our campus. My interest in service-learning arose out of more than a decade of advising and working with our student-created and student-run Alternative Spring Break program. 1 Since 1998 I have cochaired an ad hoc committee on service-learning that has met with our provost and has been looking at how we might consolidate and promote the disparate service-leaming activities on campus. At times, I have found myself in an odd position. I am not an expert on service-learning. In fact, most of what I know about service-learning has come as a result of this collaboration with colleagues and through personal investigation. Furthermore, I found myself promoting efforts to support a type of course that I had never even taught. I watched enviously as colleagues in sociology or education created and taught courses that established ties with the Nashville community Working with these committed and creative colleagues pushed me to create my own service-learning course. As a historian of 19th- and 20th-century Latin America, however, teaching a service-leaming course that draws on my professional expertise takes a bit more effort and planning than would a course on homelessness in our community or the local juvenile justice system.
