Michael Jurmu

Michael Jurmu, Professor at UW Fond du Lac, has been engaging his students with service-learning. His course GEO123 Physical Geography addresses weather concepts and is a natural science elective on the Fond du Lac campus. His students team up to teach the different weather concepts that they are learning in class to 4-5th graders at Boys and Girls Club Afterschool programs.

Before the semester begins he meets with the site managers to let them know what to expect from the students visiting their site. I was fortunate enough to be asked to sit in on the meeting between Kari Baker and Michelle Huhn site managers of two area Afterschool Clubhouses, and Michael. They have been getting together each fall to coordinate this activity. As they have been doing this for several years now, they know what to expect. Briefly we met to determine the dates students will be coming in and coordinating the return of student evaluations. The group commented about how the program almost seems to run itself and the meeting seems to be just a formality. They more time teaching us guests; about how the service-learning project worked, than they did working out details.

Due to the sucess of the program, Michael was recently asked to submit an article to ESFY "Matters" Newsletter. The article should be coming out in an upcoming issue. Michael said he is continually searching for service-learning connections to be utilized in his other courses. I look forward to seeing what is in store for his students who enroll in his courses in the spring semester, and wish him continual success in service-learning.