Volume 5, Issue 2

Goucher College, a small college on the edge of Baltimore, has long emphasized community service as a key part of its liberal arts tradition, and as is the case with many similar educational institutions, has experienced huge growth in the last seven or more years with regard to the development of service learning courses, paralleled only by a similar expansion of opportunities for student-organized social service activism. Yet one hears, anecdotally, from professors and students alike, that there is too little time in all this activity for personal and communal introspection. Why do service? What motivates us? How does it change us? What is our relationship to the persons/communities served? How is this service related to various understandings of justice itself? Why is this service necessary? What really brings about transformation, healing, hope?