Community Involvement

Instilling a sense of responsibility in students is very important for RC, with a larger aim that all students internalize the ideal of giving back to the community, locally and globally. The goal is that this becomes a life-long practice. The Community Involvement Program (CIP) requires students to serve the broader community for at least 75 hours by graduation.

What is the Community Involvement Program?

CIP projects are student initiated, student led projects with faculty or staff serving as advisors that fulfill a need in the community. Since 2006, RC students must do a social service project of at least 75 hours to get a diploma. More than a third of all RC students do more than the required number of hours. CIP is not volunteer work but is part of their education; a formative experience they will never forget.

CIP changes our students. CIP is education beyond academics. Students face real problems and try to deal with them constructively. They thus develop communication, problem solving and business skills that they will need in their professional and personal lives. They develop a sense of responsibility to others. RC students often are leaders in their fields after they graduate and we want to start them on the path to becoming socially responsible active citizens.

What does the CIP Office do?

The activities of the CIP Office as part of the Community Involvement Program include:

• Working together with the project leaders on the organization and development of more than 40 projects created under the leadership of our students each year;
• Providing training in order to guide and assist our students with the realization of projects;
• Supporting students with fundraising for projects through bake sales at school events, biannual rummage sales, and securing sponsorship;
• Teaching students enrolled in Bosphorus University’s Faculty of Education course ED300 how to utilize the course book prepared by RC CIP for the facilitation of high school community service programs;
• Preparing the measurement tools necessary to measure the impact of community service projects on students;
• Helping teachers and students integrate the concept of service learning in the classroom, particularly in annual term assignments and projects;
• Providing counseling to schools and organizations that are considering starting community service work;
• Participating (since 2012) in the Social Responsibility Projects Symposium in High Schools.

What is Service Learning?

Service Learning links academic disciplines with a service outcome. It integrates meaningful community service with instruction in the classroom by including real life, experiential objectives in the academic curriculum

Service Learning is "a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs together with structured opportunities for reflection designed to achieve desired learning outcomes" (Jacoby, 1996, p. 5).

At Robert College we promote the yearly Homework project (Dönem Ödev) as a means to incorporate Service learning into our classrooms.

What is CIP Leadership Training Program?

The CIP Leadership Training Program was initiated in Fall 2018 with the aim of better preparing and supporting students to facilitate meaningful and impactful Community Involvement Projects. 10th grade students were invited to apply to participate in the program. A total of 36 students participated in the program in Fall 2018, which consisted of 7 Modules based on the CIP Curriculum developed by CIP staff members, focusing on topics such as: Communication, Teambuilding, Needs and Resource Analysis, Defining Aims and Outcomes of Projects, Logistical and Curriculum Planning, Delegating, Eliciting Feedback and Facilitating Reflection. The program is continuing this Fall 2019 with a cohort of 38 students.

Teachers and students travel to the far reaches of Turkey or stay nearby to work on activities such as the “Geometry for the Visually Impaired” project, in which RC math students developed a curriculum to teach visually impaired students geometry at their schools.

Robert College has taken steps toward a greater sense of responsibility for the environment, with initiatives on and off campus to use materials sparingly and to recycle waste better. Taking responsibility for the future is our tradition.