How Are CWP Assignments Arranged?

If a volunteer clearing house, a service-learning center, or a community-service writing program exists on your campus, you will have concrete resources and help available to you as you research potential placements, establish contact with community agencies, and begin your service-learning project. --Carolyn Ross and Ardel Thomas, Writing for Real: A Handbook for Writers in Community Service. St. Martin's Press, 2003

PWR instructors teaching CWP sections, with the help of the Community Writing Coordinator and in cooperation with the Haas Center for Public Service, select participating agencies that match the instructors' goals and course themes. By the second or third week of the quarter, students choose agencies whose missions and projects are of interest to them; typically, instructors expect that students will be working on their community projects between five and eight weeks of the academic quarter while completing other assigned work. CWP students are responsible for setting up initial meetings with their agency mentors to clarify tasks and set deadlines for community projects and with peer partners to divide work in collaborative projects. Students meet periodically with agency mentors and peer collaborators as projects progress.

I was interested in community service; I was interested in the sciences. I was glad to be able to meld the two with my... [project] for the nature interpretive center. I learned skills that I know I will apply in the future. --Anh Bui, fourth-year Stanford student

I chose to work with my agency precisely because I had never... been involved with Native American issues before. As an international student..., I felt it would be very instructive... to work with an agency that helped Native Americans and to see how this particular ethnic group was adapting to the changes imposed by urbanization and "Americanization." --Terence Chia, second-year Stanford student