This weekend, students, faculty and administrators came together to discuss the future of service-learning — a contemporary approach to learning that combines community service and academics. We admire the work Cornell has done with regards to public service in recent years, but its future and role in academia is something that must be brought to light as the financial crisis rips away at some of the world’s most vital resources.

Cornell’s esteemed Public Service Center backs a number of impressive faculty, staff and student-lead service initiatives. But, as it stands now, these projects are meant to exist outside of the classroom.

Service-learning takes community service into the classroom, allowing students and faculty to address longer-term, macro-level issues such as the infrastructural deficiencies that lay the foundation of many problems in society. It allows students to examine societies like those in Nicaragua and Kenya and ask how their efforts can extend beyond the course of a week-long community service trip.

Yes, the PSC promotes a substantial number of service-learning courses offered across the colleges. But their focus and resources are stretched. What’s missing is the administrative support and interdisciplinary approach needed to legitimize and back these programs.

Currently there are few faculty incentives to teach such courses.

When it comes time for tenure review, these courses are not always counted toward approved coursework at the University. Thus, non-tenured faculty see no reason to take on the extensive commitment of teaching these classes, which require administrative responsibilities such as the high costs and risk management involved.

As it stands now, service-learning initiatives are the product of dynamic students and involved professors who commit more time than they are rewarded for on their transcripts or in their paychecks.

A more unified, University-wide approach to service-learning would allow for faculty to pool their resources and put oversight in the hands of the Office of the Provost, Cornell’s most central academic bureau of the administration. Allocating service-learning to the provost would emphasize the academic aspect of service and give more prominence and reputability to such courses.

A prime example is the University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships, which demonstrates an exemplary approach to service-learning, emphasizing the most critical of ingredients in public service: human knowledge. Founded in 1992, the center commits itself to solving the problems routed in many of America’s cities, specifically focusing on the problems on its home turf of West Philadelphia.

Given the current economic state, it would be foolish to think that Cornell could foot the bill for a fancy facility to host these broad initiatives anytime soon. At this point, however, it is the endorsement and support from the administration that is critical. Recognizing that service-learning is more than community service, acknowledging the academic rigor associated with such courses and providing administrative, institutional support is a critical first step.

We see a proposed service-learning initiative as a means for the University to streamline what is now a decentralized and often overlooked program. Taking this step would propel Cornell to the forefront of service-learning, setting precedent in an arena of academia that is currently lacking.