Communications professor Donna Munde of West Windsor has launched a new section of Mercer County Community College’s popular “Public Speaking” course to encourage a lifetime of service. She became familiar with the concept during a fellowship at Princeton University last year.
“Service-learning asks students to meet course objectives by volunteering in the community,” she says. “In the process, they gain a deeper understanding of course content — and themselves. There may even be future jobs in the non-profit sector.”
For the first six weeks of the semester, Munde’s students conducted research and presented speeches about service-learning and the world of non-profits. In March they began replacing one classroom period each week with volunteer assignments. Following each community visit, they record their experiences in a journal, and then use that material as inspiration for oral presentations and speeches.
The organizations that welcomed the students include the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK), where students assist in food preparation and meal service; Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, where students serve as audio editors; the Latino Land Trust, where students tutor first through eighth graders; and the GED (high school equivalency) program, where several volunteers sit in on GED classes and then work with students studying to pass their GED exam.
Munde, who has a master’s in English from the State University of New York at Albany and her master’s of communication and information systems from Rutgers, worked in the radio business for 12 years as a host of a daily talk show, an announcer, a news reporter, sales manager, operations manager, and general manager. She has been on the MCCC faculty since 1986.
Munde is married to Keith Franks, a senior network engineer at Citicorp. Their daughters are Emily and Kathryn. Emily graduated from High School South, Class of 2002, and MCCC, Class of 2004, and is now a theater major at the University of Nevada. Kathryn graduated from South, Class of 2003, and will graduate from MCCC in May.
“Community service is an element of being a full person and an educated person,” says Munde, who plays clarinet with St. David’s Church in Cranbury and with the Mercer County Community Band. “Volunteerism should be viewed as part of our responsibility to the community.”
“I am very energized,” Munde says. “My favorite part is visiting the sites and working alongside my students. Staff members at these organizations have been impressed with the caliber of our students and their level of commitment.”
In the fall, she plans to offer two sections of the course reaching out to a new group of non-profits. “If, in addition to teaching course content, we can increase students’ empathy for the less fortunate and promote awareness and action in serving the community, we are really accomplishing the mission of a college,” Munde says.
