Service Learning

Hands-on service learning throughout the curriculum

From their first year on campus, BSN students are involved in service learning activities that expose them to a wide variety of community health issues and expand their worldviews.

Students provide healthcare services to children and families--collectively amassing approximately 20,000 hours of service to local schools alone each year. In turn, they receive enriching learning opportunities that cannot be attained in the classroom. FPB weaves hands-on service learning throughout its curriculum, which provides our students with additional experience, leadership development, and a number of contacts in health care well before graduating.

BSN students experience this through their community clinical involvement each semester.

• In the winter of 2012, three teams of students fanned out across Cleveland to conduct health screenings of schoolchildren to combat hypertension and obesity. This is part of an ongoing program funded by the Prentiss Foundation.

• Also in winter 2012, BSN students educated local eighth graders about heart health for the Music and Heart Program

• In the fall of 2009, a group of freshman students administered the H1N1 influenza nasal spray vaccine to other university students, staff, and faculty.

• And in another recent community engagement experience, eight junior BSN students delivered a program on brain health as part of a special initiative of the Cleveland Public Library. The students researched brain structure and physiology, the effects of alcohol on the brain, and nutrition and activities for good brain health. Team members developed their findings into a presentation which they conducted for more than 100 adults and children.

Senior Capstone Community Project

FPB’s service learning culminates in the senior year with the 10-week Senior Capstone project, where students have an intensive experience in community-based health care with vulnerable populations such as Native Americans, migrant workers, the Australian aboriginal community, and the urban poor.

The experience provides senior BSN students with the opportunity to analyze and apply concepts in health and health care, health policy and finance, culture, epidemiology, interventions, ethics, and more.

• In November 2009, seven BSN seniors participated in hosting the annual Longfellow Winter Olympics at a local high school to develop their leadership, teaching, and management skills and to demonstrate how fitness can be fun.

• Another group of seniors recently held an immunization fair in conjunction with a local health department, which resulted in three times as many people receiving flu shots than in the previous year.

• And yet another group ran a summer sports camp to empower and educate economically disadvantaged youth on various health issues.

Although FPB students have their pick of service projects at Cleveland-area schools and local nonprofit agencies, they also have the opportunity to fulfill the Senior Capstone requirement across the country and around the world.

• One BSN senior helped to spearhead community efforts to fight against sexually transmitted infections in the Alaskan tundra

• One group of BSN students conducted rotations in home health nursing, school nursing, and family planning on the Gila River Reservation in Arizona

• Other student groups have:

  • worked on smoking cessation in Hong Kong

  • tackled public health issues in certain Appalachian communities

In the past few years, students have served in a variety of healthcare settings that span the globe, from the rugged Australian outback to the mountainous reaches of Santiago, Chile to the 900-year-old streets of Copenhagen, Denmark to the sun-kissed beaches of the Virgin Islands.

Visit our study abroad page on our International Health Programs site for more information.