For the Summer 2025 issue of this journal, we are delighted to feature two project reports and a research article that highlight how civic engagement and experiential learning enhance student learning outcomes.
In recent years, scientists and the public have been paying more attention to microplastics—their ubiquitous presence in our environment, food, and drinking water, along with growing evidence of their detrimental impact on ecosystems and human health. In order to study the parameters and composition of microplastics, it is necessary to extract and isolate them from various samples. In this issue, a professor (Gustavo Salazar), a lecturer (Alana P. Taylor), and a former undergraduate student (Liliana Driver) from Texas Woman’s University describe a novel chemical protocol to extract microplastics from soil samples, which greatly expands the scope of potential sample collection. This extraction procedure has been implemented by college students—both chemistry majors and non-majors—in a course that focuses on water in the environment from a global perspective. The authors also use their knowledge of microplastics as the foundation for outreach activities to younger students in K–12 education, with the goal of expanding the scope of the project to a full-scale citizen science initiative.
Service-learning has been recognized for several decades as a high-impact educational practice with ripe potential for fostering civic engagement. However, it can be challenging to implement a service-learning project within the structural and logistical constraints of a standard academic course. Guang Jin and Pranshoo Solanki at Illinois State University propose a creative solution to this challenge by creating extracurricular opportunities for students to participate in service-learning projects through the framework of a consulting company. The authors draw upon their collective expertise in environmental health, sustainability, and construction management to establish a variety of practical service-learning opportunities, such as using waste glass in construction materials. Students who participate in these projects report gains in professional development, team collaboration, solving complex problems, and effective communication. In addition, participating as consultants for real-world projects provide students with a greater sense of agency and impact throughout their service-learning experiences.
Continuing the theme of experiential learning, Katherine Moccia and Bernadette Ludwig at Wagner College have partnered with Matthew Holben at Tennessee Tech University to explore the impact of including an experiential learning component in a first-year college course that focuses on student mental health. The experiential activities included outreach to other students on campus to distribute mental health surveys, which were subjected to data analysis, visual display, and dissemination to the campus community. A cohort of 14 students participated in the experiential learning class, and their educational development was compared to 24 students in classes without an experiential component. Based on pre-post surveys for a variety of course learning objectives, students in the experiential learning class reported greater confidence gains for important skills in the realm of data literacy, such as creating graphs from data, comprehending the visual display of data, and communicating the interpretation of data to peers and professors. This research study demonstrates the value of using experiential learning as a real-world, civic context to enhance students’ acquisition of important analytical skills in their first year of college.
We wish to thank all the authors for sharing their scholarly work with the readers of this journal.
Matt Fisher Trace Jordan, Co-Editors-in-Chief
Marcy Dubroff, Managing Editor
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