Getting out of college classrooms and helping people

You know how people speak wistfully about folks in small towns helping each other out?

Well people help each other in cities, too. Individuals do it, and sometimes even big institutions find ways to do it.

Just last week Seattle University announced it is vastly expanding its involvement with the surrounding neighborhood, helping out in numerous ways.

Students there are already involved in public-service learning projects, as are students from many of the area's higher learning institutions.

The exchanges benefit both students and the community.

Friday, I met with students in an anthropology class at the University of Washington.

This quarter, they are studying inequality and getting a real-world experience with it by tutoring in several Seattle schools.

It's applied anthropology.

The UW has numerous community-engagement programs, but seven are grouped together in the Center for Experiential Learning.

At the heart of that group is the Carlson Leadership and Public Service Center, started 19 years ago with a grant from the Eddie Carlson family.

Carlson, who would have been 100 in June, lived an inspirational life. He worked to help support his mother and sister, then tried to put himself through the UW. He didn't finish college, but he learned a lot working various jobs. He's known as the bellhop who became the top executive of the Westin hotel chain and United Airlines.

But what's most to the point is that he was constantly involved in the community, from shaping the 1962 world's fair to serving as a UW regent. And he was always encouraging young people to serve the community and prepare themselves for leadership.

Rachel Vaughn, associate director of the Carlson Center, said about 900 students in 35 classes are participating during winter quarter.

Over the past two years, she said, there has been a 60 percent increase in the number of students interested in service learning. About 2,000 participate each year.

And the poor economy has more nonprofits calling about becoming partners. The center partners with 150-200 nonprofits and government bodies, from preschools to senior centers.

The work students do isn't one-way charity. Community engagement is part of their course work.

"It's exciting for me to see it twist from 'I'm a university student, and I'm here to save the community' to 'I'm a university student, and I'm here to learn from the community,' " Vaughn said.

Books and lectures are great, but sometimes you have to get out of the classroom and get involved to get a deeper understanding. Or in the case of the students I visited Friday, get out of the university classroom and into schools.

Holly Barker said her students are required to spend 20 hours in underserved schools as part of the upper-level anthropology class she teaches.

Students told me they learned how different kids are at each grade level, how strikingly different the performance of children in the came class can be, and how important it is that "teachers have their heart in it."

And Barker said, "I'm trying to get them to think, 'OK, we have this crisis (education inequality), what can we do about it?' "

What can we do about it. That's where we want to be, and what we want to be — a community, not them and us. Lowering walls and working together is how we solve tough problems.

Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.