ABSTRACT
My involvement with service-learning began in April 1998 when I attended a faculty-development luncheon sponsored by the University of San Diego (USD) Office for Community Service-Learning. Dr. Deborah Wiegand of the University of Washington discussed her work with service-learning in chemistry. Having never even heard the term “service-learning,” I found the presentation eye-opening. Sometime earlier, several colleagues and I had unsuccessfully tried to establish connections with a local high school. Listening to Dr. Wiegand talk about the need in service-learning to match community needs with academic goals, I suddenly understood why our previous attempts at collaboration had failed — we had not clearly identified the needs of either the college or the high school students.
