Criterion Five: Engagement and Service Core Component 5b: The organization has the capacity and the commitment to engage with its identified constituents and communities.

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	Service Learning As with many colleges and universities across the United States, UMKC has increased its student involvement in the community through many service learning opportunities in community-based organizations and groups.
Designing a program based on a monetary system, our Department of Economics within the College of Arts and Sciences developed paper notes dubbed “buckaroos” after the UMKC Kangaroo mascot with the inscription, “This note represents one hour of community service by a UMKC student” and denominated as “one Roo hour.” Each student has a community service “tax” of a pre-determined sum per semester, payable in buckaroo notes to the UMKC Treasury. Approved community service providers (state and local government offices, University offices, public school districts and not-for-profit organizations) are available to hire student workers. Each provider uses the buckaroos to pay the students for their services, with each student paying his/her tax to the UMKC Treasury. Integrating theory and practice, this program has been operating for the past seven years and has had more than 1,600 students participate, generating 9,000 hours of community service. The School of Education’s Community Involvement Course grew out of UMKC’s Institute for Urban Education [IUE] initiative and is offered during the summer semester for all of our education students. In addition to learning about urban communities, students in the course become immersed in community activities, community-based internships and volunteer service activities. Internships include working with Youth Services; Child Care and Development sites; a Salvation Army project for feeding the homeless; serving as mentors and tutors for homeless youth and their families at area Neighborhood Centers; and volunteering at a local children’s home where youth are either orphaned or abandoned by their families. Additional activities, which also help our students acquire a fuller understanding of urban issues, are opportunities to learn the community’s public transportation system and to participate routinely in family activities such as shopping, ethnic and religious rituals and neighborhood projects. In Fall 2008, the Working with Families Course was offered and includes a service learning component where students complete a needs assessment and provide school-based initiatives deemed important by parents. Three sections of this course will be offered each fall for the School’s Teacher Education Students. [For a broader discussion of the academic component of this program, see Criterion 3.] UMKC’s School of Law clinics and externship programs offer service learning for students, who work under faculty supervision on actual cases in each of the three in-house clinics, Child and Family Services Clinic, Entrepreneurial Legal Services Clinic, and Tax Clinic, whose entrepreneurial impact was described above. The SOL also offers 13 externship opportunities with the Bankruptcy Court, Department of Labor, Family Court, Federal Public Defender’s Office, Jackson County Courts, Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, Jackson County Public Defender’s Office, Legal Aid of Western Missouri, Missouri Attorney General’s Office, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Through externships, students work under the supervision of practicing attorneys, who, in turn, work with a faculty liaison. In 2007, approximately 40 percent of the students in a class of 150 graduates had completed a faculty-directed clinical program and approximately 50 percent completed an externship at the time of graduation. (This includes some double-counting, as some of our students enroll in both externships and clinics. Few students complete more than one faculty-supervised clinical program.) In the past five years, these percentages have slowly grown, from the 2002 rate of roughly 30 percent of students participating in clinical experiences. The Sojourner Clinic, founded in October 2004, is a free clinic developed and managed by UMKC’s School of Medicine students to provide outpatient care to homeless and underprivileged populations served by Grand Avenue United Methodist Temple in downtown Kansas City. On Sunday afternoons, the students, with faculty supervision, provide acute and chronic medical care at the Clinic. Sojourner students have overseen more than 1,000 patient visits, with more than 500 patients served. More than 200 students have volunteered, working more than 2,200 hours and filling more than 2,400 prescriptions. Sojourner has become the primary care provider for many of downtown Kansas City’s homeless. Our faculty physicians and the resident physicians from Truman Medical Centers and St. Luke’s Hospital serve as supervisors and supporters of the students’ effort. In 2007, Sojourner Clinic won Best Community Service Organization, a prestigious award given by UMKC.