Sport and Community Service is an innovated Fourth Year Honors course currently housed in the Schoolof Kinesiology, Faculty of Health Sciences. The purpose of this website is to describe and promote the activities undertaken by course participants.
This course highlights the fact that a great deal of valuable learning can occur outside of the conventional university classroom. Generations of alumni recognize that many of the values and skills acquired in such settings have a significant impact on ultimate career and personal success. Although the focus of this course is on the accumulated learning and community contributions of student athletes there are many other areas in which the same principles could be applied.
The central prerequisites for this course are themselves non-classroom learning experiences; those enrolled in the course already have a significant backgroundin both competitive sport and community service. With such a background as a starting point, the course provides an opportunity for students to apply and extend their accumulated skills and backgrounds to projects intended to have an impact on the community. At the same time the demanding and highly public nature of the projects encourage students to assess their own values and hone their ability to work in a team setting.
The website currently displays some of the activities of the first year of the course (winter of 2005-06). In addition to the summaries and pictures presented here, DVD’s are also available of all of the communityevents and some of the special seminars as well as TV media coverage.
The response of the students and the feedback from our internal and external partners makes it clear that the first year of the course was both a unique challenge and success from a variety of vantage points. The course will maintain a similar format for the coming year, but there are already a number of spin-off possibilities from last year’s course as well as a variety of new areas to which the same format could be extended.
Universities such as Western have come to take increasing pride in creating an overall setting conducive to the best possible student experience. This kind of course fits well within this framework by providing academic opportunities that integrate classroom and extra-curricular learning for students who excel in a variety of endeavors.
Students-athletes interested in applying for the course (Kin 494b) for the current year should consult the 2006-07 Course Outline and Application process section on the website.