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Community organisations to gain from students’ legal skills
University of Wollongong (UOW) law students will be matched with not-for-profit community organisations in a new scheme in the Illawarra that will see the various organisations benefiting from the students’ legal skills.
Tomorrow (Thursday 14 May) during National Law Week and National Volunteer Week, UOW’s Faculty of Law will launch the Community Outreach and Service Learning (COSL) Project. COSL will provide law students with the opportunity to complement the learning they do at university with learning in the community.
“Community organisations will benefit from having student skills and energy applied to the challenges that they face on a daily basis. Often such groups identify the need for research to be undertaken in pursuit of their respective missions but they don't always have the time or resources to complete the required work,” Dean of the Faculty of Law, Professor Luke McNamara said.
At the same time, he said that many students were keen for opportunities to apply what they have learned to the 'real world'.
The Faculty of Law will work with Wollongong City Council’s Volunteering Illawarra and the Illawarra Legal Centre to identify high priority community issues on which the students will work under the auspices of the COSL Project.
Wollongong City Council has also announced a partnership with the Faculty of Informatics. Under the supervision of tutors, students from the Faculty of Informatics have been developing an interactive website which will provide support services for non-profit organisations registered with Council’s Volunteering Illawarra service. Since the inception of the ‘virtual volunteering’ project, 60 students have been researching and preparing design and function options for the online site that is expected to go live in January 2010.
Professor McNamara said that a central component of the COSL project was the creation of new Public Interest Law subjects which will provide students with an opportunity to apply and extend the knowledge, skills and attributes they have developed in their previous law studies.
Students will experience a combination of intensive training and short-term clinical placement, facilitated by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) and the Public Interest Law Clearing House (PILCH) in Sydney, before completing a report under the supervision of Faculty of Law academic staff on one of the community projects identified by Volunteering Illawarra and the Illawarra Legal Centre.
“For more the 20 years our placement program, unique among Australian law schools, has contributed to the education of law graduates with an awareness of how law works in practice. Now with COSL we take a further step by giving students and community the opportunity to mutually benefit from a community-engaged learning initiative,” Professor McNamara said.
Media please note: The official launch time for COSL is 6pm Thursday 14 May at sixtyseven dining (Bldg 67). However, media unable to attend this evening function can phone Professor Luke McNamara for interviews on 4221 3382 or mobile 0439604033.