From industrial fermentation to life planning: The meaning of meaningful service in a biology service-learning course

The difficulties involved in linking service-based activities and academic learning vary across disciplines. In pure science disciplines, faculty often report that it is challenging to design and arrange service activities that are linked to their highly specialised academic courses. In this chapter, we introduce how a faculty member in the Department of Biology arranged service activities with the integration of the concept of ‘fermentation’. In collaboration with a colleague in the Department of Social Work, fermentation was adopted as a metaphor for life planning. University students led activities designed to encourage secondary school students to ‘ferment’ their lives and set goals for their learning and next life stage. Our review of this case leads into a discussion of the definition of meaningful service and how it can be realised by students of pure science disciplines. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.