The S. Sterling Munro Public Service Faculty Fellowship is awarded to a UW faculty member demonstrating exemplary leadership in community-based instruction, including service learning, public-service internships and community-partnership projects. Made possible by a donation from the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, the award is named after an aide to Senator Jackson who was also a Bonneville Power Administration administrator. Awardees receive $5,000.

Deborah Wiegand - Chemistry

If you don't think community service is an integral part of science, just ask Deborah Wiegand. Projects that help preserve a community stream or get high school students excited about higher learning, she believes, help cement ties between scientists and the community.

Wiegand pioneered science service learning in the UW chemistry department in 1994, and more than 1,000 students have taken part. They have led hands-on science projects in area elementary schools, mentored at-risk kids in science activities, monitored water quality in area streams and helped high school teachers in DNA sequencing projects.

Deborah Wiegand and some of her students collect samples at Ravenna Creek as part of a service learning project.

Students in the three service-learning chemistry courses must provide a needed service in the community by applying principles and methods learned in the classroom. Those requirements, Wiegand said, help students understand the value of what they are learning and how to apply it in everyday life.

"The service experience adds a dimension that has to do with the role of science and scientists in society," she said. "It's a goal for our students to feel more connected to the community and see themselves as scientists who can contribute to the community."

The three courses are progressively challenging. The first is the most tightly structured in how students take part in community service. In the second, which can be taken as many as six times, they are expected to take on independent projects relating to their service sites. For the third, they assume leadership roles in the work being done at their sites.

"We definitely see the students who stay for two or three quarters are getting more from the experience than those who stay for one," Wiegand said.

A byproduct is that the students become UW ambassadors in the community. Whenever a student begins working in a high school classroom, Wiegand said, there are inevitable questions about university life, and UW in particular. The students enjoy general acceptance, whether it's working with teen-agers in a high school classroom or patrons of a senior citizens center.

Anna Horton is a senior zoology student who expected to spend just one quarter in service learning. But that quarter in an elementary school was so rewarding that she stayed in the program three years.

"The most substantial lesson I walked away from the program with was what Debbie taught me about the value and necessity of service to others and the importance of bringing science back into the community," Horton said.

Chemistry professor Joe Norman Jr. extols Wiegand's vision at a time when the only service learning examples involved high school tutoring.

"She saw service learning as a vehicle to engage undergraduates actively in science," Norman said. "She expands students' vision to include issues of scientific literacy, ethics and objectivity as well as political and social influences on community scientific decisions. This approach to service learning in the sciences remains unique today."

In fact, the Association of American Colleges and Universities acclaimed Wiegand's approach as a national model, and this year she presented her work at the group's annual meeting.

Wiegand has a strong interest in education, and finds "the challenges in chemistry education are particularly exciting." But her approach to service learning isn't born from a lifetime in the classroom. After receiving her bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois in 1973, she spent four years as a chemist with a private food company in Rockford, Ill. She returned to academia in the 1980s as an instructor at Rockford College, then came to Seattle in 1988 while continuing postgraduate work at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. She received her doctorate in 1990, the same year she became a chemistry lecturer at the UW. She was named senior lecturer in 1995, a year after starting the science service learning effort.

Among the service learning success stories is the City of Bellevue Stream Team, which works with landowners on ways to control runoff and protect the city's waterways. A student might spend weeks examining the ecology of a particular site and then recommend planting of native species that would do well in that area's particular conditions.

"That's been a really good site for some of our students," Wiegand said. "Botany majors have done lots of work there, and students from other majors who are interested in the environment have learned a great deal from their projects there."

Vince Stricherz, News & Information