Moely Service Learning Teaching Award goes to Casey Love

Experiential learning is key to the classes that Casey Love teaches.

A Tulane University political science senior professor of practice, Love sees how engaged her students become when they are out in the community doing service learning.

"They are learning on their own. I am there to facilitate that learning but ultimately it"s happening without me standing at a podium," said Love.

Offering information about legal rights to immigrants at a detention center, tutoring Spanish-speaking workers in English and computer skills, and producing podcasts on immigration issues are among the service-learning projects in Love"s Politics of Immigration, Mexican Politics and Government, and Latin American International Relations courses.

In recognition of her support and involvement with service learning and the Tulane Center for Public Service, Love received the Barbara E. Moely Service Learning Teaching Award at a ceremony on Dec. 3.

Tulane provost Michael Bernstein said, "Casey has been one of the leaders and exemplars of service learning as Tulane has expanded and refined service learning in the curriculum. She is a shining example of service learning: what it"s about, how it can be implemented and how it benefits students."

In addition to implementing service learning into her own courses, Love is coordinator of public service internships for the political science department. She"s also on the Center for Public Service Faculty Advisory Board.

Love also is the co-director of the Altman Program in International Studies and Business.

For the Altman program, she has facilitated service learning for students in a summer course, Intercultural Communication and Business, offered in Costa Rica.

Next up for Love, as Tulane globally expands its service-learning activities, is a trip to Thailand to explore how a course she is teaching in summer 2015, Introduction to Globalization, can incorporate service learning in Southeast Asia.