Amid the 11:15 a.m. swirling motion in Kohlberg’s Coffee Bar, students greet each other above the din. Friends plan to meet for lunch after their next class, shifting in opposite directions with their cups of fuel. A few stragglers, draping their feet over the plump lounge chairs, miraculously catch catnaps.

Perched on a high stool, biology major Katie Davenport ’05 cushions her chin against her hands on the table. She’s waiting for Sharon Pierce, an Environmental Services (ES) employee and her Learning for Life (L4L) partner. Pierce, who is also a L4L Steering Committee member with 15 years of College service, woke up at 2:30 a.m. to start her 4 a.m. shift in Parrish. Like many other ES workers, she takes additional cleaning jobs off campus.

“Everyone’s always talking about all the work they have to do,” Pierce says. But L4L “lifts you up and makes your work easier by giving you knowledge.”

Davenport, who played rugby before an injury, learned about staff members carrying two jobs when a Public Safety driver helped her get around campus. “She mentioned having two jobs and not going to bed until 3 a.m.,” Davenport recalls. “So I said, ‘I should be driving you.’”

Shortly after that experience, Davenport decided to join L4L. “I became more aware of how privileged we [students] are and how some employees are working really hard all of the time,” she says.

Pierce and Davenport, who are learning together how to use a video camera from the Education Department, both have colds. But they brighten in each other’s presence.

“Katie is so open and easy to joke with that you’ve got to love her,” Pierce says.

“She’s a sweetheart and makes my day!” Davenport, in turn, says she values “talking to someone with experience [who has] the same wacky humor.”

“But I would never interfere with her classes,” Pierce says, smiling at her friend, who is considering a future in genetics. Last semester, Carly Hammond ’02 worked with Pierce on photography skills, resulting in a campus exhibit (and many of the photos for this story).

“I always ask permission to take photos,” says Pierce, who finds video more challenging. “Students are easier to interview [on video] because they don’t label things. You see people’s reactions.”

Through “trial and error,” Davenport says they are experimenting with the video camera. “But mostly, we just have fun.”

Coordinating schedules, they meet two times a week. “We’re filming and interviewing people we meet on campus,” she adds. “We’re trying especially to film other L4L partnerships and see what they’re doing.”

Pierce—who describes herself as shy—has learned to approach people and simply ask, “What’s on your mind today?” She says that students and others on campus welcome the opportunity to talk about family or to dance in front of the camera. Pierce takes turns doing interviews with Davenport, “who wanted to share and didn’t want to take control.”

Before arriving in Kohlberg, Pierce finishes an interview with L4L partners Karly Ford ’03 and ES worker Angela Freeman, who make electronic greeting cards to practice typing and word processing. “Angela says that Karly lifts up her day and makes her a better person,” Pierce reports.

Freeman, who has worked at Swarthmore for a decade, wants to become a social worker. “We found a program at Widener University and worked on the application together,” says Ford. “Angie went to an open house and is now all set to start work on her degree in January by taking night classes.”

Pierce approaches her next “victim” in Kohlberg. “Do you have anything on your mind that you want to share?” she asks, as Davenport begins to film.

Then, the batteries die suddenly.

“We’ve had a lot of technical problems,” says Davenport, searching for an electric outlet. Sitting down on the floor, she reads the user manual and recalls that “once we forgot the tape.”

Pierce and Davenport exchange a private look and burst into laughter again.

“I take a lot from the College and wanted to give something fun to Sharon,” Davenport says. “It’s good to have community.”

Conceptualized in 1998 by a transfer student, staff, and an education professor, the campus-based L4L Program was launched in spring 1999. Initially pairing only a handful of participants, the program now matches approximately 100 students and staff members, who generally meet two hours a week. Together, they explore continuing education interests, including GED and driver’s license preparation, computer and chess skills, and choreography and sign language.

“Most of the staff [members] involved are from ES, but, increasingly, Dining Services staff are joining the program,” says L4L co-coordinator Brigid Brett-Esborn ’04. “We have a longtime participant from facilities and a request from [a member of] the Scott Arboretum staff,” adds co-coordinator Jessica Lee ’03.

Maintenance employee John Haubrich became partners with Lester Tran ’03—after several frustrating attempts on his own—to learn Web design. Through L4L, he finally created the Web site he had long imagined about his family, including a photo gallery (http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/jhaubri1).

“Family is everything to me,” he says.

In exchange, Haubrich shared “lessons about life: family, children, work, happiness, and relationships,” says Tran. After attending graduate school, Tran will “translate L4L experience to practice in the education field.”

Haubrich stresses that Tran was a good instructor because he wouldn’t do the work for him. “He just monitored the work, and I designed the Web site myself,” he says.

Similarly, Tran believes that L4L offers the “opportunity to build a strong friendship with someone you otherwise would not meet during your time at Swarthmore. Two given people can learn all sorts of lessons from one another and, from there, build a strong, long-lasting friendship.”

According to Pat James, associate director for training and student programs at the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, L4L’s “most important accomplishment is building community among students and staff,” she says. “One of the favorite parts of my job is to be part of launching a successful program and seeing students and other staff assume leadership as gracefully as the student and staff coordinators of L4L have done.”

Giving L4L its initial impetus, pioneering student co-coordinators Susie Ansell ’02 and Elizabeth Derickson ’01 applied for—and received—a Eugene M. Lang [’38] Opportunity Grant. L4L is also supported by a Literacy Action Network Grant through Student Coalition for Action in Literacy Education (SCALE; see later description about L4L members representing Swarthmore at these conferences) and a Swarthmore Foundation Grant.

“Getting the program off the ground was definitely a struggle,” says Ansell, now a research associate at Education Week. “L4L needed a strong commitment from both students and staff members because the program was based on a bond of trust. Neither partner could let the other down by missing too many meetings or slacking off.”

But after many made full commitments to L4L, the challenge became “dealing with more logistical issues such as attempting to appropriately pair over 100 eager participants who all had extreme variety in schedules and educational interests,” she adds. “Although there were always a few partnerships that faltered each semester, we had overwhelming success with pairing students and staff members—mainly because both parties were so excited and enthusiastic about joining the program!”

According to Ansell, L4L fills needs in both partners’ lives. Swarthmore “academics can be so trying, a student’s schedule can be so exhausting ... and to have someone at the end of the day to give you a big hug and pull you off into a corner of the library to just talk, to catch up on each other’s lives and families—nothing ever made me feel so comforted and loved.”

Jessica Lee stresses that Ansell and Derickson “are responsible for its success today.” She adds that Assistant Professor of Education Diane Anderson “is the rock of this program.”

Growing out of Anderson’s course Literacies and Social Identities, L4L reconceptualizes the traditional teacher-student model. Anderson thinks that “one-on-one informal learning, community change, and mutual and reciprocal participation” characterize L4L. “Many service staff members are among the ‘working poor,’ with two jobs, and some have been historically disadvantaged educationally through race, socioeconomics, and class,” she says (see sidebar).

The College supports L4L by allowing staff up to three paid hours of work time to meet with student partners each week. Based on mutual respect for the knowledge each person has to offer—regardless of job status and income—L4L draws partners together as peers with common interests. Learning is an equal exchange.

“Regardless of age, ethnic background, past experience, place of origin, religion, and education—we’re all human,” says Ansell. “We all crave love and affection and new experiences. We all love to learn new things and to make new friends. We all share commitments to personal relationships—to family and friends. We all feel sad and lonely at times, and we all love to share joy with others! We all deserve respect from others. We all feel pride in the work we do, whether that work [is] a 10-page history paper or waxing the floors in Beardsley.”

She adds: “All employed adults are professionals. We must value and respect the work they do. A person’s sense of self-respect and self-pride directly stems from their job and how well they do it. People know their jobs, they know their experiences, and we must draw on that knowledge if we want to improve the system... Whether you are 5 or 50 years old, you do not deserve to be talked down to. The first person to talk to when you want to improve the system is someone already in the system.”

Derickson, who is serving in the Peace Corps in Cape Verde, off West Africa, was visiting in State College, Pa., during a recent holiday. “I became so involved in the L4L Program because I had such a wonderfully positive experience with my learning partner, Don Bankston,” she says. “I wanted to ensure that other students and staff members had the opportunity to have similar experiences.”

Now focusing on preschool development in the Office of Social Welfare and teaching computer classes at the region’s youth center in her Peace Corps work, Derickson adds: “As I struggle keeping 12 students engaged and on track at one time in my computer classes, I miss the ideal nature of my one-on-one learning partnership with Don. Sometimes I feel trapped by the mandated curriculum of my computer course, and I wish I could follow the learner-motivated model of L4L.”

Derickson and Bankston—still in touch—created the L4L Web site (http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/learningforlife/), which Bankston updates as their Web guru. An L4L Steering Committee member who now has his own computer consulting business and janitorial service, Bankston works on campus as an ES supervisor from 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m.

“L4L helped me learn computer language,” says Bankston, who was “heart- broken” when Derickson left campus. “I learned so much with Liz; we did a lot of the L4L footwork together.”

According to Bankston, Liz did the L4L groundwork—“knocking on doors”—and “Susie got things into action,” he says. Information Technology Services and the Art Department also gave their “time and resources.”

In addition, Bankston describes “friendly professors who helped L4L get going” during the summer program, when “everyone in L4L has input.” Professor of Studio Art Randall Exon offered a class before the group visited an art museum, and Professor of Studio Art Brian Meunier taught photography before they experimented with single-use cameras.

Since his L4L experience, Bankston and others from L4L “enjoy talking with students. Now there is community between staff and students,” he says.

“I’ve seen attitudes change, and confidence has grown.”

During the past two summers, the L4L Summer Experience has offered group-oriented workshops and excursions. In 2002, Lee organized the eight-week syllabus, including sessions on nutrition, gardening, physical fitness, and genealogical research. Group tours to Longwood Gardens, Chester’s historical sites, and the African American Museum in Philadelphia, with lunch in Chinatown, were also conducted.

In her end-of-the-summer report to the Lang Open Competition Grant Committee, Lee wrote: “This summer experience ...; has had great impact on me personally, academically, and professionally.... I have been given great perspectives to take into my senior year and a more realistic perspective with which to live my life.”

Lee also reported the need for increased advertising, staff member involvement, and faculty participation. “In summary, the [L4L] Summer Experience requires improved infrastructural support and organization,” she wrote.

Ansell had advised Lee to delegate duties for greater staff involvement and control over the program. “However, this is easier said than done. Many of the staff members work multiple jobs and have families, all of which make most of the organizational duties inconvenient or impossible,” Lee says. “I personally felt that as long as I was acting upon the suggestions and decisions of the Steering Committee, I was adequately involving the staff members.”

The current committee includes Lee, Brett-Esborn, Dozier, Pierce, and Bankston.

“I tried to connect with the Dining Services and grounds staff, but their schedules were incompatible with the ES staff’s schedules. Also, it was impossible for them to participate in the extended trips [because of] their work times,” Lee says. “I hope that we will eventually be able to say that L4L involves all of the Swarthmore College community.”

In her own L4L team with Heather Fleharty ’03 and ES staff member Doeshes Brinson, “the most wonderful part was the relationship that developed among all three of us,” Lee says. “We became so close that we could talk about family and personal matters and have come to rely on each other for help outside of the academic/tutor-tutee realm. The most challenging part of the partnership is knowing that the [hierarchical] system may never change: The prevailing attitudes, which include disrespect of and indifference toward staff members on campus, are difficult to change. Even when Doeshes gets her GED or gets another job, she will be replaced by someone else.”

In the November L4L newsletter, Brinson says: “This will be my last year working with Jessica and Heather, as they are both seniors this year. I am going to miss them so much. At the College, through this program, they have learned a lot from me.... I can go to them when things are going on in my life, and they will help me with the right decision and the best results.”

Hamza Wali, another ES employee who worked with Meggie Miao ’03 to learn Chinese, “was very impressed with the idea of a one-on-one learning system,” he says. “It was like having your own private tutor on whatever subject matter an individual desires to learn. L4L is a very unique learning program that allows students and staff the opportunity to become learning partners, to break the social boundary, and to establish friendship.”

Miao, an art major and Asian studies minor pursuing work as a photo journalist, says: “I was really lucky to work with Hamza, who was not only a longtime active L4L participant but also an inspiring person who has made a lot of achievements...;. Hamza not only has mastered all kinds of computer skills, he was enrolled in a school nearby while working, trying to get a para-legal degree!”

She adds: “It was very pleasant to be able to spend a set amount of time with him each week, teaching the basic greeting phrases and some cultural phenomena. It was even more pleasant to be able to just talk to him, to see how his studies were going. At the time, Hamza was involved in the Living Wage Campaign, and we would chat about how that was progressing, and what Hamza thought about different issues concerning that.”

Wali, who received his paralegal degree at Delaware County Community College last spring, says: “Without a doubt, the L4L Program has indeed influenced my thinking and outlook toward making a difference in other people’s improvement as well as my own.... My biggest challenge is to remain focused on the social and economic issues that affect the underprivileged in our society. The source of satisfaction is to make a difference and to encourage others to learn for life and exercise a voice for economic and social change while employed here.”

Wali credits Ansell, his first L4L partner, “a great deal for influencing, motivating, and empowering me to achieve personal growth and development. That inspired me to take a leadership role.... I was also selected, along with two other staff members, two students, and Diane Anderson to participate in a workshop for the SCALE Conference at the University of North Carolina in October 2000.”

Al Miser, an ES supervisor who greets people in Parrish Hall with an ever-present smile, also attended the 2000 SCALE Conference. “It was my first plane ride,” he recalls. “Professor Diane Anderson sat next to me, helping to calm my nerves.” Describing his friend, Miser says Anderson “is like an angel from heaven—such a wonderful, caring person. She treats people like every person is on one level, the human level. I’ve also met her family.”

Describing her experience at the SCALE Conference in 2000, Anderson wrote: “It was very powerful to have students and staff members who have been involved in L4L and researching L4L as collaborators and presenters. Liz Derickson, Liz Dozier, Al Miser, and Hamza Wali were wonderful public speakers. They articulated both the personal and the community effects of the program. They represented Swarthmore in the best possible way, and I am so proud to have been among them.”

Miser, who continues to learn about computers with Michael Loeb ’03, adds that “The conference was very educational and informative. Swarthmore College really stood out. Other schools want a program like L4L.”

The November L4L newsletter describes the “Year-Round Service Learning” presentation that Lee, Brett-Esborn, Dozier, Bankston, and Jamie Layton of Dining Services gave at the 2002 SCALE Confer-ence in Chapel Hill, N.C. “L4Lers have attended this conference for the past three years, and every year, L4L is told that there is no other program like ours in the nation!”

As conceived in Ansell’s original grant application, one L4L goal is to have other colleges replicate the program.

“Welcome to WSRN, 91.5 FM, Swarthmore’s fiercely independent radio station,” says Lillian Ray ’05, a math major aspiring to teach high school students. “I hope Kenny will join me soon, bringing his mix of smooth jazz and soul.”

Kenny Whye, an ES employee, is her L4L partner. Their radio show is popular with Whye’s friends, like Liz Dozier—Ray’s other L4L partner—who listens while cleaning Hicks.

“It’s my comfort,” Dozier says later, pointing to her headphones.

Back in Parrish, before Ray’s show begins, she props herself on the back of a chair in the barren lounge outside the studio—stopping to catch her breath after climbing four flights. “That’s the hard part,” she says.

But “it’s especially rewarding to help a staff member be heard all over campus and get to feel a little more like part of the community. My favorite part of L4L is getting to know local community members who live here, have roots here, have been here for years, and who interact with students on a much more personal level than professors do,” Ray says.

“It makes me feel like Swarthmore is a much less isolated, idealized place—like it’s in a real community [similar to] the ones we all grew up in,” says Ray, who is from Charlottesville, Va. “Plus, it’s a good chance to make new friends, learn new skills, and learn a lot about being good teachers and students, who need to be brave and willing to put themselves on the line. They have to be willing to speak up and ask questions.”

After a few minutes, Ray says, “We better go into the studio.” Ray finds a CD left playing by the preceding phantom DJ and selects three more to fill her hour.

Meanwhile, after her cleaning shift ends in Hicks, Dozier slips her headphones around her neck. She hops up on a computer room stool—just down the hall from the engineering lounge, with stacks of journals such as Network Computing and Modern Steel Construction. Cranes working on the new science center, emerging within immediate view from the large windows, drone as students collaborate in a nearby lab.

“I could retire at any time,” says 67-year-old Dozier, who has worked at the College for 18 years. But I like being around the students and absorbing the information.”

Algebra was her “favorite subject” in high school, which Dozier didn’t complete when she married in 1951. Since then, however, she has completed a GED.

Ray says that Dozier is “incredibly good at math” and hopes to have more time to work on additional algebra or computer projects together. In return, Dozier thinks her forte is “giving students love. We tell each other stories about our families.”

A member of the L4L Steering Committee, Dozier wanted to learn more about computers, so she could explore her family’s genealogy. “My mother died when I was 3 years old, and I did research to find some of her relatives,” she says. A link to her “Five Generations Page” (http://www.geocities.com/lizdozier1/fivegenerations.html) is now on the L4L Web site.

“I think it is really important for students to have a community here that we feel like a responsible part of,” Ray says. “I also think that having an adult learning partner can teach both partners so much about teaching and learning.”

With her eyes gleaming, Dozier says that L4L “helps me feel part of the campus. We’re all flourishing in this program.”