doctoral degrees conferred in 2000–01

students who attended credit outreach classes

courses that include a service-learning component as a course requirement

Freshman Callie Blumberg has learned something no ordinary classroom lecture could ever teach: how to get to know someone over a game of checkers.

"Coal before fire," Andy, her opponent, says, meaning that black goes before red in checkers. Andy knows that Blumberg has never played before, and he's showing her the ropes.

Blumberg's introduction to checkers is taking place at Madison's Off the Square Club, where approximately 150 people with chronic mental illness can safely pass time in a society that seems to have no meaningful place for them.

The opponents in the game are both club regulars — Andy by choice, Blumberg as one of the 19 students participating in a First-Year Interest Group (FIG) at UW-Madison.

First introduced in fall 2001, FIGs typically represent a cluster of three related classes, which are designed to integrate curriculum for first-year students and to break down the massive campus into manageable sections. As mini-learning communities, the 13 FIGs currently offered provide innovative ways of learning — one of the university's strategic priorities — and serve as an important component of the diversity-strengthening Plan 2008. A recent evaluation found that 93 percent of FIG students enrolled in fall 2001 returned to UW-Madison the following fall.

Although it's extremely rare for first-year students to do community service as part of their course work, Blumberg is doing just that. As a requirement for her class, Beyond Myth and Cruelty: An Overview of Serious Mental Illness, she is volunteering about five hours each week at Off the Square Club. She usually comes to the club twice a week, spending time with Andy and other members both one-on-one and in small groups.

"We sit and talk, watch television, play cards ... I think they feel comfortable sharing their stories and impressions with me, and I feel comfortable sharing mine with them," she says.

In addition to the main "anchor" course, Contemporary Issues in Social Work, Blumberg is taking Problems of Ethnic and Racial Minorities and Introduction of Psychology. Students in the course have done community service work at Yahara House, YWCA, Safe Haven, Tellurian, the Gateway Community Support Project, and Hospitality House, as well as Off the Square.

Although it's still relatively early in the semester, Blumberg has no doubt that she's growing intellectually, socially, and politically, as a direct result of her volunteer work at the club.

"I think it is horrible that the mentally ill often are ostracized," she says. "I would like to tell people in the larger community that the mentally ill are just like anyone else, except that they have a disease."

In time, some of the FIG students hope to speak to Madison high school students about mental illness.

"Although it takes a lot of time out of my schedule," Blumberg says, "working at the club gives me a good feeling. It's really nice to be doing something positive for the community."