http://entrelib.org/conferences/2013-conference/scheduled-presenters/ This presentation draws on field literature and provides examples of how community engagement or service learning activities can be defined and what the scholarly implications of that could be as well. This includes some examples of successful projects that found a great impact for the field of librarianship. –Mary G. Scanlon, Research and Instruction Librarian for Business and Economics, Wake Forest University –Michael A. Crumpton, Assistant Dean for Administrative Services, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

1. The Role of the
Librarian in Teaching
Social
Entrepreneurship
Mary G Scanlon – Wake Forest University
Michael A Crumpton – UNC at Greensboro

2. Our Time Today
• Define:
• social entrepreneurship
• community engagement
• service learning
• Teaching opportunities
• Service learning
• Role of librarians

3. Community Engagement

4. GMU’s Center for Social
Entrepreneurship

5. Our Institutions
The Institute for Community & Economic
Engagement
The Institute for Public
Engagement

6. 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.

7. Defining Social
Entrepreneurship
• Drives social change,
must be lasting and
have
transformational
benefits
• Holds high promise
for improvements

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. Organizational Leads
• Schools of business in higher education
• Mgmt processes and revenue creation (sustainable)
• Philanthropic organizations
• Ashoka
• Schwab Foundation
• Skoll Foundation
• Kauffman Foundation
• Libraries

15. 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?

16. …….continued
• Can you approach the problem from a different point of view?
• How could the new approach improve the value to the
stakeholders?

17. Social Entrepreneurship and
Service Learning

18. 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.

19. Social Entrepreneurship
We already teach entrepreneurship.
North Carolina Entrepreneurship Center
Center for Entrepreneurial Studies
Interdisciplinary Center for
Entrepreneurship and e-Business

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

21. Social Entrepreneurship
Challenge

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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. A Model of Service Learning
Subject Learning
Reflection Community
Engagement

28. Service Learning ≠ Volunteering

29. Learning Outcomes
Unique to service learning pedagogy:
• Understanding social issues
• Personal insight
• Cognitive development

30. Learning Outcomes
Bottom line: real-world context
enhances learning

31. 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

32. Information Needs
Traditional Class
• Subject learning
Service-Learning Class
• Subject learning
• Community engagement
• Reflection

33. 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

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

35. 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

36. 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

37. Service Learning
Support Organizations
Campus Compact
National Service Learning Clearinghouse

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

39. References and Readings
• To Be Posted