As a new generation of practitioners engages with service learning, at a time when higher education faces questions about learning outcomes and costs, and in the context of such issues as globalization and the environment, this book poses important questions about practice, institutional sustainability, and future directions. Among these are:

What counts as service learning? What value does it bring to institutions? Is it appropriate for all students? How is globalization impacting service learning?

Divided into three thematic parts, this book successively covers...

We accomplish extraordinary things when we do ordinary things together. This heartfelt and hopeful conviction led LSU professor Marybeth Lima to begin the LSU Community Playground Project as a way to involve her students in the larger Baton Rouge community. Fifteen years and over seven hundred students later, Building Playgrounds, Engaging Communities tells the remarkable story of the Playground Project's ongoing partnership with area public schools to design and build safe, fun, accessible, kid-designed playgrounds. Lima's experiences with the Playground Project range from outright failures...

Service-Learning: Engineering in Your Community, Second Edition, links design methodology and engineering analysis to the socially beneficial application of engineering principles.
Authors Marybeth Lima and William C. Oakes emphasize the importance of reflection, teaming skills, project management, communications, and ethics, carefully considering the integral roles that they play in the process of engineering for the common good.