The Role of the Librarian in Teaching

Social Entrepreneurship

Mary G Scanlon – Wake Forest University Michael A Crumpton – UNC at Greensboro

Our Time Today • Define:

• social entrepreneurship • community engagement • service learning

• Teaching opportunities • Service learning • Role of librarians

Community Engagement

GMU’s Center for Social Entrepreneurship

Our Institutions

The Institute for Community & Economic Engagement

The Institute for Public Engagement

Auerswald and Quadir • Social entrepreneurs are individuals who seek to discover,

refine, and employ effective solutions to societal challenges. • Anyone who takes it upon themselves to organize a solution to

a social challenge. • Regardless of context or motivations, the positive societal

impact of entrepreneurship is to force change in the status quo, driving improvements to the provision of goods and services.

Defining Social Entrepreneurship

• Drives social change, must be lasting and have transformational benefits

• Holds high promise for improvements

Entrepreneurship • Positive

• Special, innate abilities • Act on opportunities • Out-of-box thinking • Determination • Create something new

• Negative • Ex post term • Passage of time • Delayed impact or

benefit

Value creation by searching and responding to the need for change

Components of Entrepreneurship

• Context • Unsatisfactory

(subpar) equilibrium

• Outcome • Permanent shift from

lower-quality equilibrium to a higher quality

• Characteristics • Inspiration • Creativity • Direct action • Courage • Fortitude

Social aspects • Value proposition

• Motivation is the process of identifying and pursuing vision

• Value = large-scale transformation that benefits a significant part of society

• Target is underserved, neglected or disadvantaged population

Summary definition • Social entrepreneurship components:

• Stable but unjust equilibrium that causes exclusion, marginalization or suffering

• Identifying opportunity to unjust equilibrium and creating social value proposition

• Forging new equilibrium that is stable and improves impact to affected population

Other Definitions • J.A. Banks, first use, distinction between “tinkering” and

“utterly changing” • Dees, most often cited; 5 essential characteristics:

• Innovative • Opportunity oriented • Resourceful • Value creating • Change agents

Dacin, Dacin and Tracey • Four Key Factors of the social entrepreneur

• Individual characteristics • Sphere of operation • Processes and resources • Mission

• Future avenues for analysis • Institutions and social movements • Networks • Culture • Identity and image • cognition

Organizational Leads • Schools of business in higher education

• Mgmt processes and revenue creation (sustainable) • Philanthropic organizations

• Ashoka • Schwab Foundation • Skoll Foundation • Kauffman Foundation

• Libraries

Your turn to reflect • In groups of two or three, think of an issue on your campus or

community that impacts a lot of people (social) and is stable, yet not at a desirable level.

• What would be a value proposition to improve the level of comfort/benefit/desire?

…….continued • Can you approach the problem from a different point of view?

• How could the new approach improve the value to the stakeholders?

Social Entrepreneurship and Service Learning

Social Entrepreneurship • Service learning is a way to teach social entrepreneurship. • Service-learning classes have greater information literacy needs

than traditional courses. • Librarians play a larger role in these classes.

Social Entrepreneurship We already teach entrepreneurship.

North Carolina Entrepreneurship Center Center for Entrepreneurial Studies

Interdisciplinary Center for Entrepreneurship and e-Business

Social Entrepreneurship What’s missing is the ‘social’ part.

Social Entrepreneurship Challenge

Social Entrepreneurship Service-learning provides the missing link between entrepreneurship education and social entrepreneurship education.

Service Learning • A well-established and accepted pedagogy • Practiced widely across higher education and K-12 • Supported by a substantial body of scholarly research and

literature • Learning outcomes confirmed in numerous research projects

Characteristics of Service Learning

• A learning experience where students actively participate in service experiences that meet a real community need;

• The service enhances what is taught in the classroom and is integrated into the students’ academic curricula;

• And the program provides structured time for a student to think, talk, or write about what the student did and saw during the actual service activity.

The National and Community Service Act of 1990

Characteristics of Service Learning • A learning experience where students actively

participate in service experiences that meet a real community need;

• The service enhances what is taught in the classroom and is integrated into the students’ academic curricula;

• And the program provides structured time for a student to think, talk, or write about what the student did and saw during the actual service activity.

The National and Community Service Act of 1990

Characteristics of Service Learning • A learning experience where students actively

participate in service experiences that meet a real community need;

• The service enhances what is taught in the classroom and is integrated into the students’ academic curricula;

• The program provides structured time for a student to think, talk, or write about what he or she did and saw during the actual service activity.

The National and Community Service Act of 1990

A Model of Service Learning Subject Learning

Reflection Community Engagement

Service Learning ≠ Volunteering

Learning Outcomes Unique to service learning pedagogy:

• Understanding social issues • Personal insight • Cognitive development

Learning Outcomes

Bottom line: real-world context enhances learning

Librarian’s Role in Service Learning

• Information literacy becomes key • Service-learning courses have information needs beyond those of

a traditional course • Students have evolving information literacy needs throughout the

semester • This leads to repeated contact between students and librarians

• Librarian’s role is expanded

Information Needs Traditional Class

• Subject learning Service-Learning Class • Subject learning • Community engagement • Reflection

Information Needs for Service-Learning

• Subject Learning: • Journal articles • Books

• Community engagement: • Info about the community organization • Demographic data • Info on the local issue

• Reflection: • Info on the issue at the national or international level • Benchmarking against similar community organizations

elsewhere

Challenges & Opportunities Librarians are neither talking nor writing about service learning, though a few LIS schools are using service learning in their curricula

Challenges & Opportunities • Little to no relevant literature

• Neither research nor case studies

• “One can examine [the literature] and barely find a mention…of the impact of service learning on library services, information literacy, information-seeking behavior, or critical thinking as it pertains to human information processing. There is simply a research void…” - John S. Riddle, 2003

How to Support Service Learning?

• Become familiar with those faculty who are basing their classes on service-learning

• Become familiar with the literature on the methods and advantages of service-learning

• Collaborate with faculty before classes begin to schedule library instruction time and discuss research topics

Service Learning Support Organizations

Campus Compact

National Service Learning Clearinghouse

Role of the Librarian? • Support research • Provide venue for gathering • Facilitate groups • Add perspective • Encourage/participate service learning projects • Others?

References and Readings • To Be Posted