NorthWest Arkansas Community College

View a number of service learning projects that NWACC students have created and proudly implemented. Photos of students participating in projects are also available below.

Service learning projects include:

• Arkansas History Project
• Elementary Education Entrepreneurship (E3) Project
• English Language Learners Conversation Circles Project
• Globalizing Project
• Holocaust Education Project 
• Human Insecurity
• Human Rights Project
• International Education Project
• Native American Project
• Sustainability Project / Butterfly Garden
• Veterans Project
• Women's Project

Learn more about participating in a service learning project by attending an informational meeting.

Informational Meetings Schedule

Projects

Arkansas History Project:
This project involves students working with local archives, helping maintain local cemeteries, or judging History Day. At local historical associations, students can transcribe historical documents, research historical buildings and photograph them, and provide other archival support. With the assistance of the Service Learning Office, students can receive supplies to clean neglected grave sites throughout local cemeteries. At the direction of the History Day coordinator, students may judge or volunteer to support a regional contest of history posters, papers, websites and documentaries produced by local middle school and high school students.

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Elementary Education Entrepreneurship (E3) Project:
This project is dedicated to learning about being an entrepreneur and assisting elementary children in designing, making and producing products for sale. The participating school is Elmdale Elementary in Springdale, Arkansas.   

The Lean Canvas Model is taught to the elementary kids who then implement a plan to devise a product concept, market it for a target audience, and present a prototype to a “Shark Tank” of evaluators from the community. They then get a loan for materials to produce the product that goes on to be sold at NWACC.

• E3 Project
• E3 Project Presentation
• Additional Information about E3

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English Language Learners Conversation Circles Project:
This project will offer students the opportunity to work with English Language Learners (ELL) in NWACC's Adult Education program. Students discuss professor-driven, student-driven topics on current events, societal concerns, and/or deeper issues.

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Globalizing Project
This project offers students the opportunity to globally reimagine, resituate and recontextualize the overlapping communities at NWACC and the type of services that students may do to engage those communities. Students in this project become familiar with global processes and structures of people, goods, values and society as they touch northwest Arkansas and other locales.

The service opportunities in this project include helping plan and host International Education Week, assisting International Ambassadors in their tasks, assisting Global Studies and International Education, and working towards giving the college a more global orientation.

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Holocaust Education Project
During the spring 2022 semester, Professor Marie Imus had her online history students present on fundamental questions about the Holocaust and engage the public with valuable information. The presentations and blog posts sparked informed dialogue and increased literacy about the Holocaust within the NWACC and NWA community. View the presentations that have been reproduced on a blog. Professor Imus continues this project with different questions and ideas in her history courses.

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Human Insecurity
Through this project, students help those who are housing insecure and economically precarious by serving at organizations such as Beautiful Boutique, Salvation Army and Way Station.

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Human Rights Project

This project teaches students about international human rights law, how governments violate these rights, and international governance that reports on human right violations.

Students may code, write letters about, and/or do public presentations on human right violations. They may also work with various local groups to assist and empower marginalized groups.

Past student projects include raising money for the Starfish Scholarship, which provides financial assistance to NWACC students who were in the foster care system, and partnering with Sleep in Heavenly Peace to build bed frames for children without beds.

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International Education Project:
In the fall of 2018, students produced a brochure for the Global Studies Program and an event schedule to promote its various activities and study abroad opportunities.

• Global Studies brochure

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Native American Project:
This project focuses on the history, culture and language of Native Americans, especially the Western Cherokees who reside in eastern Oklahoma in the Cherokee Nation.

The students sponsor a supply drive and fundraiser for the Cherokee Immersion School, located in Park Hill, Oklahoma. The Cherokee Immersion School was founded in 2000 and offers the entire curriculum in the Cherokee language. The immersion school hopes to increase the number of Cherokee language speakers to preserve this ancient language. 

•  Native American Project

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Sustainability Project / Butterfly Garden:
This project is committed to sustainability at NWACC and in Northwest Arkansas. Project members may consider combining various project components by working on the monarch butterfly milkweed garden and participating in Benton County clean up/recycling events.

NWACC Science Department Lab and Outdoor Living Laboratory Coordinator Laurie Scott and  Environmental Officer of the Benton County Environmental Division Teresa Sidwell are two important partners of the Sustainability Project. 

The links below show the evolution of the NWACC Monarch Butterfly Garden, a rain garden brochure produced in the fall of 2017, and a presentation on Monarch butterflies to assist in proposing the creation of a milkweed garden.

• Evolution of the NWACC Monarch Butterfly Garden 
• Milkweeds for Monarchs  
• Monarch Butterfly Garden and Students
• Additional Information about the Butterfly Garden