This semester, students in three sections of Speech Communications (SPCOM 100B, Effective Speech) are helping others while helping themselves.

Instructed by Amanda Kundrat, Maggie Pitts and Janice Krieger, the course has taken a different and admirable approach in its focus this semester in the form of community service projects.

Among the activities slated for the class this semester are: writing cards to prisoners, beginning a food drive and assisting the American Red Cross.

At the beginning of the semester, instructors divided students into three groups of five to six people and gave them a hypothetical situation in which a newspaper criticized them for not giving back to the community.

The project consists of three speeches. Students must present a 30- to 40-minute videotape during their first speech of a group meeting where they discuss solutions to possible problems and figure out how to deal with any obstacles that could arise.

During the second speech, students tell their classmates more specific details behind the projects, and summarize what they learned over the semester as the third speech.

The instructors and Dennis Gouran, the supervisor for SPCOM 100B, should be lauded for these efforts — not only because the students are able to take a different approach to a general education class, but also because the benefits of the project will be felt outside of the classroom and even in Penn State.

Students sometimes perceive general education classes such as SPCOM 100B as boring and useless because they do not concentrate on topics in their major area. Getting the class out into the community and encouraging them to work together is a much better alternative than having them sit in class and listen to speeches for an hour. This class can serve as a model to everyone at Penn State that learning does not necessarily have to take place in a classroom.

We hope the example of SPCOM 100B will inspire other university classes to take a similar approach to educating students and helping to get involved in and improve the community at the same time.