New course partners with State College Food Bank to promote service and learning

During the fall semester, a group of Penn State students spent time volunteering at the State College Food Bank assisting clients in the food pantry and helping manage inventory and donations.

This experience, part of the new course BBH 497: Community Engaged Learning for Diversity and Health offered by the Department of Biobehavioral Health in partnership with the State College Food Bank, encourages students to think critically about health equity and participate in opportunities to serve their community.

Anjolie Suberro, a third-year student majoring in Biobehavioral Health, is intending to pursue a master’s degree in public health where she hopes to be positioned to design interventions that improve the quality of life for underserved communities. She said that volunteering at the Food Bank was her first opportunity to see what a successful intervention looks like, and she is excited to see more in different communities.

“After volunteering at the Food Bank for a few weeks, I already had clients waving and smiling at me when they came in because they remembered when I served them. It may seem small, but it felt good to know that I made an impact that made them instantly smile,” Suberro said.

Danielle Rhubart, assistant teaching professor in the Department of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State, teaches the course.

“We know that when students engage in service consistently over time, they move from a position of sympathy to a position of empathy, and that’s an important transition,” she said.

“The students started out having sympathy for people using the Food Bank. By the end of the semester, they better understood the structural and social influences at play and shifted from feeling like an outsider observing those influences to feeling like someone who is part of the solution.”

The course introduces students to the challenges and successes of an organization addressing a public health need—in this case, food insecurity—and can interact with the clients being served, according to Rhubart.

“Many of the students in the Biobehavioral Health degree program go on to work in positions where they engage with communities on a regular basis, and this course equips them with the skills and cultural competencies they need to do that. This is an important learning opportunity,” she said.

Reflecting on their experiences

In addition to volunteering each week, the class meets to discuss their individual experiences at the Food Bank and how it relates to what they were learning in their traditional coursework. They also kept a journal to reflect on their experiences.

For Hannah Williams, the opportunity to volunteer at the Food Bank helped bridge the gap between traditional coursework in healthcare topics and what is actually happening in the community.

“I would encourage students to keep an open mind to the opportunity of community-engaged learning. Opportunities like this are limited, so take the chance when you can! It truly is life changing,” said Williams, a third-year student in the Biobehavioral Health degree program.

Jessica Hedlund, a third-year student majoring in Biobehavioral Health, said that spending time at the Food Bank was an opportunity to interact with other volunteers, both students and local community members, and hear about their reasons for being there. It also opened her eyes to disparities in the local community, which she says will help prepare her for studying to become a physician’s assistant after graduating from Penn State.

For Rhubart, “In reading students’ journals and reflective essays and talking with them, I’m excited to see them thinking and looking more outwardly. At the Food Bank, they have learned to see the upstream factors that shape health in people’s lives. They hear first-hand how health is shaped by food security and economic stability. And they’re understanding how structural and social factors in Centre County shape the health and wellness of its residents.”

Creating lasting partnerships to benefit the community and students

Rhubart said the experience aligns with her own belief that part of the role of education is to teach students to be actively and humbly involved in their community. She was particularly impressed that students valued the opportunity to interact with people who, in other circumstances, they would consider very different from themselves.

“As a land-grant university committed to the public good, it is important for us to create ethical, reciprocal and sustainable partnerships with community organizations,” Rhubart said. “In this case, we want to create a lasting partnership where both the needs of the Food Bank and the course learning goals are being met.”

Rhubart is eager to continue teaching this course and cultivating a relationship with the State College Food Bank. Her own experiences with community-engaged learning showed her how valuable these partnerships can be.

“We have a responsibility to make sure that students are prepared to be engaged members of their communities,” she said. “We want our students to succeed not only professionally, but also as engaged community members. Community-engaged learning instills in students a feeling of belonging, a confidence in their ability to make a difference and a sense of social responsibility — all things that we represent at Penn State and want our students to leave here with.”

About the course

BBH 497: Community Engaged Learning for Diversity and Health is offered in conjunction with an existing course, BBH 302 Diversity and Health. Diversity and Health, which introduces students to the impact of diversity — including but not limited to race, ethnicity, culture, gender, age, socioeconomic status and sexual orientation — on health in the United States.

Adding the Community Engaged Learning for Diversity and Health course to the curriculum allows students to see first-hand how those influences play out in a real-life setting. The ultimate goal of these courses is to help students develop an appreciation of diversity and understand how it influences conversations around health, health status and health promotion across the country.