Community Arts and Service Learning
Jonathan Dandurand (KCAI '05 graduate) with summer art student at Mattie Rhodes Counseling & Art Center
CASL's first internship was a stroke of good luck for both the intern and KCAI's community partner, Mattie Rhodes Counseling & Art Center. When Jon Dandurand's summer-school plans fell through, he came to the ARC for help in finding the right course for the last three credit hours he needed to graduate. Pairing Jon with Mattie Rhodes was just the solution art center director (and KCAI alumna) Jenny Mendez was looking for, as they were preparing for the final three-week session of summer art programming. Jon's skills, caring nature and maturity made him the right intern to work alongside the staff to help prepare and teach the 50 children attending art camp.
Community Arts and Service Learning (CASL) certificate program
Student voluntarism and community partnerships are the foundation for a program unveiled at KCAI in 2005. The CASL program encompasses a rigorous 15-hour academic curriculum notable for its three-hour service learning internship. Students who complete the program will be eligible for a certificate in community arts.
Participating students will be required to take three courses in liberal arts; a course entitlted Collaborative Art Practices, which is offered in through the college's interdisciplinary arts program; two studio classes; and an internship.
Contact Julie Metzler for more information on specific offerings.
Ph: 816-802-3357
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KCAI-Brush Creek Community Rain Garden
As part of the Community Arts and Service Learning program at KCAI, students collaborated with a variety of civic organizations and businesses to create the KCAI-Brush Creek Community Rain Garden. The garden, which opened in spring 2007, is located in Theis Park at Volker Boulevard and Oak Street, only a few blocks from the Kansas City Art Institute. New features are being added in 2008. For details, visit www.kcai.edu/raingarden.
CASL internships
Semester-long internships place students in community agencies as volunteers to develop skills they will need to become active, contributing members of their community -- skills that include planning, resource management, communication, evaluation and working independently and as a member of a team.
Just as their work supports the mission and goals of their community partner, the students' experiences expand and deepen their classroom and studio education. In a service learning internship, the students represent the college and may seek the resources of the Kansas City Art Institute -- facilities, faculty, programs -- to address the issues facing the community agency.
Students may become a service learning intern with a KCAI partner agency in one of three ways: as a student enrolled in the CASL certificate program; as a service learning volunteer independent of the academic program; or through a service learning work-study assignment.