As a coordinator of the clinical practice requirement for undergraduate nursing students and an instructor in the nursing program, Lida Dekker is “always looking for ways to help students broaden their perspectives.”

From vaccinating community members without healthcare to working with preventative educational initiatives, WSU Vancouver nursing students are able to fulfill their clinical practice requirement in a personalized capacity.

“Getting out in the community and thinking outside the box” is what helps to place students in meaningful service-learning partnerships, says Dekker.

At Home At School (AHAS) is a WSUV project in K-20 service learning and volunteerism. The lab school integrates courses in Education and is the site of internships, independent research projects, and volunteerism for WSUV students. Students from the BA and master's programs in Education, as well as English, Human Development, Anthropology, and Digital Technology are among the participants in the AHAS Scholars service-learning project with Americorp. AHAS is host to senior projects and includes Youth Advisory Board representatives from five local school districts. Volunteers are needed to teach or assist teachers in all areas of the AHAS curriculum, including visual arts, theatre, music, video story-telling and computer literacy, pre-engineering, and environmental science; volunteers are also needed to mentor students and for everything from office support to physical labor involved with moving, building theater sets, and other ongoing projects.

For further information, contact Founding Director, Susan Finley, at finley@vancouver.wsu.edu

As a result of Enron and other business scandals, special attention is being paid to the internal control system that supports reporting of accounting information. All business entities, whether public, private, governmental or nonprofit, should be taking a careful look at their own system of “checks and balances” to ensure that the accounting information on which they are basing their decisions, and providing to others, is reliable. In the accounting information systems course in the business curriculum, senior-level accounting students form a partnership with a local business to perform such an assessment. Specifically, using a generally accepted framework, the students evaluate the effectiveness of controls in a particular business process and provide recommendations for enhancing the internal control system where appropriate. Over the past fifteen years, accounting students have been involved in over 150 of these service-learning engagements involving a wide range of profit and non-profit entities, ranging from one-person operations to larger businesses. The students have the opportunity to apply concepts learned in class and the business partner receives an analysis and set of recommendations for their internal controls.

Serving the community while facilitating ESL teaching experience for her students, Dr. Tonda Liggett actually holds her ESL and Bilingual Education course (T&L 505) at Sarah J. Anderson Elementary School. For a portion of the class time, WSU Vancouver graduate students have the opportunity to work one-on-one or in small group settings with K-4 English language learners in the dual language program.

Among other engaged research projects, Dr. Mosher has worked with graduate students and other WSU faculty members in analyzing data from the Vancouver Police Department and Washington State Patrol on racial profiling. With Dr. Laurie Drapela and graduate students, he is currently evaluating the impacts of a .1% sales tax increase on drug and mental health treatment services in Clark County.