Philanthropist and banker Harrison I. Steans has committed $5 million to establish and endow the Irwin W. Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning at DePaul in Chicago and to expand the university’s integration of academics and community service.

Named for Steans’ late father Irwin, who instilled in him the need to be a steward who uses his unique talents and gifts for the betterment of those around him, the Steans Center will support and enhance DePaul’s commitment to serving the community. The public announcement of the Steans gift and the launch of the center will be held at a noon luncheon on May 18 at the Chicago Hilton & Towers International Ball Room, 720 S. Michigan Ave.

Harrison Steans has been described by observers as a “hands-on philanthropist” and a “banker’s banker.” A member of DePaul’s Board of Trustees since 1990, he has chaired NBD Illinois Inc., a multi-bank holding company, and U.S. Ameribancs. He currently is president and owner of Financial Investments Corp. of Chicago.

His passionate work to improve the future of North Lawndale, one of Chicago’s neediest communities, by empowering its residents has earned him national acclaim. He has funded a variety of initiatives in Lawndale including a charter school and a job-training program for welfare recipients.

The Steans family’s gift to DePaul illustrates its commitment to projects that help improve communities and motivate students to make lifelong contributions to Chicago and society at large through service.

“DePaul is, indeed, Chicago’s university,” said Steans. “It prospers as the city does, and the roots of both are strongly intertwined. Our hope is that the Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning will extend and deepen these relationships.”

DePaul began actively incorporating community service into its curriculum in 1998 as part of its strategic plan. It began with five classes that were primarily undergraduate and concentrated in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Today, community service courses are offered university-wide. To date, some 1,500 DePaul students have participated in more than 90 community service courses and worked in more than 150 community organizations across the city as part of DePaul’s service learning initiative.

“Harrison Steans’ pledge to community-based service learning marks an important step for DePaul as we strive to become the New American University that the late Carnegie Foundation president Ernest Boyer envisioned,” said Richard Meister, executive vice president for academic affairs. “This new university is one that gives primacy to teaching and learning and engages society through its educational mission.”

Community service courses provide students with realistic situations in which they can apply classroom theory while gaining practical experience working with local nonprofit organizations. Each course requires a minimum of 25 hours spent outside of class working with a community organization on a project that relates to the information covered in class and defined by the community partner as important. Students also can pursue a minor in community service that prepares them to assume leadership roles in community and nonprofit agencies.

According to Laurie Worrall, who directs the Steans Center, increasing numbers of universities across the country have begun to explore the benefits of service learning during the past 10 years. Campus Compact, a Brown University-headquartered organization that tracks community service on college campuses nationwide from its 639 member institutions, reports that in 1999 its members charted an estimated 374,333 students involved in ongoing service; 13,011 faculty members involved in service-learning and an estimated 11,876 service learning courses offered.

At DePaul, the Steans gift will fuel this growing concept in education that is key to the university’s mission. “We believe that service learning is a teaching methodology that links to important aspects of the university’s mission—education and community service,” said Worrall. “It is a viable pedagogy, but it is still fairly new in higher education. One thing that sets DePaul apart is that someone of Steans’ stature, with a proven commitment to communities and service, has made such a generous contribution. This is a strong validation of the work we do.”

Students at DePaul embrace the notion of service learning. Donna Bucko, 23, learned more than the case law surrounding legal issues that involve race when she took a community service class on race, racism and U. S. law at DePaul’s College of Law. The second-year law student investigated how the Illinois Housing Development Authority allocates funds and resources to Latinos for the housing advocacy organization, Latinos United.

“It was an incredibly eye-opening experience to be able to apply what we learned in class to a real life situation,” said Bucko, who has dreamed of becoming a public interest lawyer since she was five years old. “When you’re a law student, you’re isolated from real world experiences and have the tendency to look at your law books and think they are gospel, without considering how they affect real people’s lives. This experience shows both sides.”

Community partners participating in DePaul’s program are nothing less than excited about the opportunity to tap valuable human resources while helping students learn. DePaul students have worked with such partners as Friends of the Chicago River, El Centro de Educacion y Cultura and the Agudas Achim Temple. They also have taken on a variety of projects including conducting a feasibility analysis study for a mid-sized grocery store in Humboldt Park, developing resume writing software for a temporary help organization and removing buckthorn from the Chicago River.

“We had a diverse group of students who were exposed to a reality of a community in a way they would not in a classroom or by reading a book,” said Mervin Méndez, director of programs for Latinos United, which has worked in partnership with DePaul for the past two years. “The DePaul students helped us get a good deal of work done in a short period of time that we would not have had the resources to do ourselves.”

For DePaul faculty, community service helps bring class presentations to life. “As a professor, community-based service learning classes give me the opportunity to present the ‘seeing is believing’ theory,” said Sumi Cho, a professor of law who teaches the community service course on race, racism and the law. “Students don’t have to believe something just because they read it in a book. They get a real life link to how it plays out in the real world.”