Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning Complicating College Students ’ Conception of the American Dream through Community Service Learning

This study considered the impact of the SERVE Program upon participating college students’belief in the American Dream. The SERVE Program is a community service learning program sponsored by the phi-losophy and theology departments at Ignatius University. Using a mixed-methods approach, the authors found that participating students demonstrated significant declines in their belief in the American Dream in comparison to a randomly assigned control group. Qualitative interviews revealed that the program exerted this influence, in part, by providing participants with diverse opportunities to think critically about the availability of opportunity in the United States. Hochschild (1995) has defined the American Dream as “the promise that allAmericans have a rea-sonable chance to achieve success as they define it— material or otherwise — through their own efforts” (p. 6). A belief in this promise is one of the most deeply held beliefs in American culture regardless of ethnicity, class status, or geography (Bullock & Lott, 2001; Flanagan & Tucker, 1999; Kluegel & Smith