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LSU's Service-Learning Fellow Believes in Reaching Out
Carol O'Neil, director of LSU's Didactic Program in Dietetics, and associate professor in the School of Human Ecology, is known among her colleagues for incorporating service-learning into her nutrition classes. But to her students, she is the teacher and mentor who provides them with some of their most memorable learning experiences. Through service-learning, O'Neil's students learn lessons that extend beyond the classroom and into the community, where they are able to realize the impact they can have on their fellow citizens. O'Neil, the 2003-2004 Service-Learning Faculty Fellow at LSU, believes that helping others will help her students. By involving her students in community-service projects related to their course work, she finds that the students are better able to grasp the concepts they are learning in the classroom. They also gain an understanding of how their future careers can affect the world. O'Neil has received numerous accolades and awards for her service-learning programs, including the 2004 Gulf Summit Award for outstanding contributions to service-learning research and the 2003 National Association of Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture Award for Louisiana. Her most recent honor was the 2004 TIAA-CREF Service-Learning Teaching Award. "O'Neil is by far the most talented, capable, and progressive university instructor I have known in almost 20 years of university teaching," said Marcos Fernandez, associate dean of the College of Agriculture. Service-Learning  Service-learning is a class-credit program in which students perform a community-service activity that corresponds to what they are learning in the classroom. The program has positive effects on students' grade-point averages, writing skills, critical thinking, values, self-efficacy, and leadership skills. Alexander Astin, a university professor and director of the Higher Education Research Institute, found that students generally forget half of the things they learn passively, but recall 90 percent when doing "the real thing." "Critical thinking skills are the best tangible skills relating to retention; if students do not get involved in their first year, they do not come back. The best thing to do is offer students your time," said O'Neil. O'Neil's hands-on approach to learning trains students to become prepared for the future, and her practice of service-learning helps to create an informed and creative labor force. O'Neil believes a service-learning program must be available for students to realize real world situations. "Service-learning is the only way students get experience and help with the people they will be working with. They won't get it in the classroom and these people are one day going to be their clients. Service-learning lets them try out things in the field that we teach," said O'Neil. "Her incorporation of service-learning adds a new dimension to classes," said Kenneth Koonce, dean of the College of Agriculture. "The learning experiences students gain through community activities have motivated them to learn more efficiently." Service-Learning inside the Community 
O'Neil initially built her class curriculum around service-learning to get her students more excited about their field and to help them gain career skills. Students apply their experience to community-related problems in informative presentations and council sessions. "I am a better person knowing I help solve problems within our community," said Courtney Mascarella, a service-learning student. In spring 2004, O'Neil instituted nutrition-related service-learning projects in three classes: Medical Nutrition Therapy II, careers in dietetics, and science and society. In the MNT class, students studied diseases associated with a poor or unbalanced diet, such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis, and cancer. Her science and society class, coordinated with The Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank, helps to provide ways to fight these diseases. "This is a benefit for the students because they get to think up a better, more nutritional concepts to show how to cook donated food," said Bonnie Bordelon, Volunteer Coordinator for the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank. Bordelon who has been working with O'Neil for the past year at the Food Bank, said that the students' main objective is to combat different types of diseases that are related to poor nutrition.
"During my volunteer experience at the food bank I learned how hard life can be for some people. It made me realize that low-income families in Baton Rouge and surrounding areas are plagued with obesity, cancer, hypertension, diabetes, and arthrosclerosis and the foods they receive do not help them in these disease states," said Mascarella. Future accomplishments A long-range goal for O'Neil is to assist in the growth of service-learning at other universities. O'Neil mentors a Ph.D. student who teaches at McNeese State University and who recently added service-learning into her curriculum. "She wanted an interesting way to teach and I mentioned service-learning. And at first she did not know what it was," O'Neil said. Under her guidance, her student successfully incorporated service-learning into nutrition classes at McNeese. O'Neil enjoys working in the College of Agriculture at LSU and hopes she can continue to bring about various innovative educational programs. She is a member of the Undergraduate Study Group and is involved with the new freshman summer reading program. She also works with students in the honors program and with undergraduate students who are interested in research projects. Contact Brecke Latham or Kristine
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Didactic program
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Students who participated in the service-learning food bank project first analyzed the food's nutritional content.They applied their results and designed suitable menus and recipes for the food bank population. The students also worked with the food bank and prepared fact sheets about the diseases and noted the treatments available.
