LEARNING THROUGH REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE

For students at Sam Houston State University, community engagement is more than volunteerism, but a way of learning. The Center for Community Engagement works with professors who wish to incorporate community engagement into their classes.

Brandon Strubberg, assistant professor of technical communication and graduate coordinator, has worked with the CCE since starting his role at SHSU in 2018. Inspired by his mentor, a fellow ACE course instructor, Strubberg decided to provide his students with a way to turn their assignments into work experience.

With a background working with outside business clients to produce technical documents from his time as a doctoral student, Strubberg understood the benefit.

“I felt like I learned more in that class from working with an external client than I had in any of my other classes before that,” Strubberg said. “When I got here and saw how much support there is for community engagement at the university and how much faculty are encouraged to do it, it was a no-brainer.”

The undergraduate technical writing course Strubberg teaches is required by numerous degree plans, including criminal justice. With many students in his class majoring outside of English or language studies, he decided to select partnerships connected to their areas of interest to better their overall learning.

“I have some classes where 90 percent of the students are CJ majors and I want them to get as much out of this English class as they can,” Strubberg said. “I want to show them how the skills that we’re going to work on in this class can actually be applicable to their potential careers.”

Part of this initiative included partnering with the Houston Police Department to develop key organizational documents for their Geographic Information Systems Unit in its fledgling months. His students were able to write the standard operating procedures and a report on the unit’s successes and services.

The graduate students were later granted access to the system’s applications and produced instructional documents for officers who were new to the system. In 2020, their work was recognized by the HPD Chief of Police for their collaborative efforts.

“Collaborative partnerships create greater transparency on what police agencies are doing,” HPD Lieutenant Fredrick Croft said. “One of my favorite aspects of doing these projects is being able to act as a resource for the students in the classes, answering questions they may have about HPD or law enforcement. In the future, I’d like to see the partnership expanded to other units in our department and other educational departments at SHSU.”H