"Serving Our Neighbors: Learning Across the Lines that Divide Us "
We are no longer accepting presentation proposals for the upcoming 2012 FBSL
conference at this time. Thank you for your interest.
The Seventh Biennial Faith-Based Service-Learning conference for teaching faculty, co-curricular faculty, administrators, students, and community partners interested in the interactions between spirituality, faith perspectives, and service-learning will be held at Messiah College on May 31-June 2, 2012. Previous conferences have brought together a diverse group of persons for rich conversations and mutual learning.
Please share this conference information and call for papers with your colleagues who might be interested. The conference is of particular interest to persons at faith-based institutions, but is by no means limited. Conference participants are invited to submit papers and facilitate roundtables that discuss theoretical assumptions, community-based research, model service-learning programs, and pedagogical strategies that build on the strengths of faith traditions and community assets. A distinctive of the conference is the special emphasis given to the ways that particular faith traditions impact service-learning and community-based research. This year's theme lends itself to an exploration of how faith traditions contribute to and sustain a vocation to service and learning.
Conference participants are invited to submit proposals for papers, workshops, roundtables, or presentations. These may be conceptual or empirical papers, or descriptions of innovative programs. Roundtable proposals should include dicussion and active participation. Papers should highlight the distinctive contributions that faith traditions make to service-learning research, pedagogy, and practice. Workshop proposals that examine the relationship of service-learning and disciplinary expertise as an innovative pedagogy contributing to original scholarship and/or the vocational mentoring of students are encouraged. Proposals should be sent via the online web form (below) no later than Feb 15, 2012. Persons whose proposals are accepted will be notified as soon as possible and the abstracts will be printed in the conference brochure. Selected papers may also be published in national service-learning journals. Listed below are some topics to consider. Proposals on additional topics are also welcome.
- Creative programs working on spirituality, social justice, social policy, advocacy, and social change;
- Uses of technology to build the capacity for service-learning on the campus and in the community;
- Exploration of the strengths of faith traditions to sustain a call to service for the common good;
- Issues related to building effective asset-based community partnerships with both faith-based and other organizations;
- Particular issues encountered in service-learning and/or community-based research at faith-based colleges;
- Examples of programs/practices that employ service-learning to pull together what academia, the church, and/or society have often separated;
- Descriptions of model programs and best practices;
- International service-learning;
- Institutionalizing service-learning at faith based colleges;
- Service-learning project planning, design, and assesssment