THE RIPENING OF APPLES
Off campus, building relationships with
community organizations was a separate
challenge. Ulku-Steiner thinks it ultimately
helped boost town-gown relations; but the
service placements weren’t always a good
fit, leaving some students and some Chapel
Hillians with less than positive experiences.
That’s still a problem at times; now, for
instance, 15 classes with a Latino component might converge on the same groups.
Placements sometimes miss their targets.
Many student-initiated organizations die
on the vine because the leadership turns
over completely about every four years.
The early APPLES organizers won their
initial campaign to tax their classmates 90
cents to operate it, but before it went into
effect, the UNC System froze new fees —
they had to scramble for money for two
years before it thawed. The students found
they didn’t understand organizational management well enough; perhaps partly as a
consequence, the first professional director
they hired didn’t work out.
For the first five years, funding was
dicey, and there were clear vision differ-
ences in succeeding groups of APPLES
leaders. The common determination was to
keep it student-run, and therein lay a
debate: Would APPLES be better off as a
non-affiliated nonprofit, or as an official
part of the University? If it chose the latter,
it would walk a fine line between the
attendant credibility and the danger that
leadership by students could be eroded—
even the prospect APPLES could have its
student fee funding diverted.
These were the issues when Mary Morrison, with 14 years’ experience managing
community volunteers, came to Carolina to
direct the organization in 1995 (her boss
was 20-year-old senior Mike DiIorio).
“Continuity is always an issue,” Morrison said. “Students are leading complex
lives, not just in their studies but in their
personal lives and families back home.” As a
volunteer, she explained, one always can
walk away from one commitment for what
they perceive at the time is a higher commitment.
APPLES leaders opted for a direct affiliation with UNC, and during Morrison’s
seven years here they came under the
provost’s office, which now pays staff
salaries — and lends critical credibility with
the faculty.
The benefits of experiential learning
flow back into faculty research, too. Rachel
Willis, an economics and American studies
professor whose research is based around
issues of access to work in the American
economy, with a focus on the changing
manufacturing climate in North Carolina,
said helping her students find placements in
the community helped make contacts for
herself.
“It changed my whole research career,”
Willis said. “There’s no course I do now
that hasn’t been shaped by service-learning.” She added, “Parents thank me for taking their kids out in the real world.”
The APPLES concept was sustainable,
said Morrison, now director of the service-learning center at Elon University, because
of “visionary students with a very broad
streak of practicality.”
Besides its place in the curriculum,
APPLES runs alternative fall and spring
break and summer service programs
domestically and abroad. Students in the
summer program serve eight-week intern-
