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Vol. 38, No. 18
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4-22-2009
By: Julia Harris Mapping the lifeline of a neighborhood
The word “map” isn’t as straightforward as it might appear. There are online mapping sites, portable GPS navigation systems, road maps and atlases and throw-away guides to zoos and amusement parks.
And then there are the maps developed by the students in Tim Hawthorne and Assistant Professor Ola Ahlqvist’s service learning course in geography. Instead of merely telling how to get from point A to point B, these maps tell the story of a community: Columbus’s Near East side, an area that is steeped in a history layered with more complexity than many class participants had known to expect.
Hawthorne, Ahlqvist’s graduate teaching assistant and the primary author of the course curriculum, said the experience has been eye-opening for all involved.
Students in particular, he said, learned that “the Near East side of Columbus has a rich history, a dedicated group of community members and is so much more than what it is portrayed as on the evening news and in the local papers.”
The course was run in partnership with the African American and African Studies Community Extension Center (AAASCEC) — a big name for a relatively small building on Mt. Vernon Avenue — and other community service organizations in the neighborhood.
The rough idea for the course was to turn students loose in the community to meet with the community partners and talk with the residents and come up with final projects that did one of two things: Map out access to human services such as employment assistance or food pantries, or plot “Points of Pride” showing historical hot spots such as speakeasies or jazz clubs.
“I wanted students to learn the basics of good map design while also understanding that maps have power and they as map makers have power,” Hawthorne said. “But most importantly, I wanted students to walk away with more than just an introduction to cartography. I wanted them to be able to apply what they learned in a real community to address a real need, to view their education as more than just classroom learning.”
Most of the 35 students enrolled in the class had not taken a service learning course before. Some, it was revealed, had never had meaningful interaction with African Americans or ventured into a black community.
During winter quarter, the students took a field trip of the area and met often with the community partners and residents about what their needs and interests were for the maps. Being invited to explore the rich history of the area and not just provide help to residents in need, Hawthorne said, was a way to broaden student horizons.
It also helped bring home a few poignant lessons, said Carla Wilks, senior outreach program coordinator for the AAASCEC. “The Mount Vernon community has so much history but students just don’t know about it, and the sad fact is that a lot of our oral historians are passing away,” she said. “We’re really trying to capture that story.”
A good beginning can be seen in the final output from students, which revealed a level of growth — both in terms of academic achievement and personal maturity — that Hawthorne found gratifying.
When the students presented their maps — ranging from poster-size maps for hanging in prominent community locales to two-sided handouts for distribution to residents — at the AAASCEC to a gathering of community members, “The sense of accomplishment and pride I saw in many of their faces was worth it,” Hawthorne said.
His co-teacher also was impressed with how well the projects were received by the community — more than 100 of whom showed up for the presentation. “There was this hum of recognition in the audience when the students pointed out these historical jazz venues and these points of pride,” Ahlqvist recalled. “It was interesting to know how much that particular theme resonated.”
The response of the audience was commensurate with the level of effort and attention the students put into their work, Hawthorne said. “The final maps turned out better than I’d expected. I think it had to do with the fact that students were not only being graded by me, but they are also being ‘graded’ by the community.”
Golden Jackson, program director of Ohio State’s Service Learning Initiative, says that’s exactly what service learning is all about. While admitting she may be biased in her enthusiasm for this particular course — she has a degree in geography, after all — she asserts it fires on all cylinders for what defines a good service learning course.
“It’s experiential, community based and targeted to meet the needs of the community but also advances the education of our students,” she said. “It was really a wonderful project and could have implications for a course in public health, a folklore course or many others. It’s wonderful to bring students from different areas of study and points of view to the same problem or question.”
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