An Innovative University-Based Mentoring Program: Affecting College Students' Attitudes and Engagement (Report‪)‬

Service-learning is designed to provide credit-bearing educational experiences for students to actively address community needs while reflecting on their service activity to further their understanding of course content and enhance their civic engagement (Ash, Clayton, & Atkinson, 2005). A primary goal of the service-learning movement in higher education is to increase students' community involvement and awareness of issues of social justice and societal inequities (Einfeld & Collins, 2008; Eyler, 2002). The link between experiential learning and personal development is formed through ongoing written reflection explicitly tying community experiences and course content (Correia & Bleicher, 2008; Dunlap, Scoggin, Green, & Davi, 2007). Although little research exists investigating the process through which social awareness and civic engagement are promoted (Einfeld & Collins; Jones & Hill, 2003), the reciprocity of benefits experienced by both the student and the community may be a contributing factor (Schmidt, Marks, & Derrico, 2004). An additional service-learning goal is to challenge students' negative stereotypes and assumptions about individuals from culturally diverse backgrounds, particularly those from disenfranchised or marginalized groups (Boyle-Baise & Langford, 2004). A unique challenge occurs when economically privileged college students interact with members of low-income environments during their service-learning experiences (Dunlap et al., 2007; Jones & Abes, 2004), necessitating efforts to counter potential incidences of "blaming the victim" for the effects of one's economic situation (Moely, McFarland, Miron, Mercer, & Illustre, 2002). For example, Rockquemore and Schaffer (2000) reported that the primarily White affluent college students in their study initially expressed deeply rooted negative attitudes toward the destitute and disenfranchised individuals they encountered during their service-learning experiences. Unless specific strategies are introduced to assist students in adopting a more complex view of a social problem, they may perpetuate the "fundamental attribution error" of locating the problem within the individual rather than considering the context within which a behavior occurs (Rhodes & DeBois, 2006).