Jason Hogue, Ph.D.

Service Learning Course(s):

• ENGL-2319, British Literature

“I think it [service learning] helps students to start thinking about how they're going to connect their work to the real world and make it matter."

Before teaching at UTA in 2014, Dr. Jason Hogue attended the University of West Florida where he was able to get experience in service learning. He was able to transfer the project of volunteering at a community garden from the other institution and incorporate it into his English courses at UTA. His interest of volunteering and tackling topics such as food politics and the environment were able to be emphasized within his courses.

Dr. Hogue was able to strategically correlate the experience of volunteering at a community garden to the topics written about in his class. As his focus is the environment, he is using service learning as his main objective to surround the community with intentions to have students become environmentally aware. Dr. Hogue notes that attending the service learning workshops and utilizing the resources from them made maintaining and expanding on his projects feasible.

He enjoys service learning because he is fascinated that it can be implemented into different fields making it important to UTA students to connect with the real world. The semester he participated in the fellows program he enjoyed being a part of that camaraderie and getting to meet other people with similar interests.

For faculty members who are hesitant on implementing service learning, Dr. Hogue recommends giving it a shot and prepare for the level of commitment that the process requires.