In late February of 2012, just days before the critical Michigan Republican primary, leading candidate Mitt Romney set out to give a headline-grabbing policy speech that would explain his plan to revive the struggling economy. But after security concerns prompted the speech to be moved to the cavernous Ford Field football stadium, the news media fixated on the near-empty stadium instead of the content of Romney’s speech.

Although 1,200 supporters were there, the 65,000-seat stadium looked empty. The poor visuals – what political insiders would call bad “optics” – overpowered Romney’s desired message and the Romney campaign confirmed an important political principle: it is not just what politician say or write that matters, equally important is how politicians look and visually present themselves. For political communication audiences, what they see as just as important as what they hear or read.

Several months ago I was called to serve as a juror. My first response was “Wow! What am I to do? I have aphasia. How can I understand a trial?”

When I went to the courthouse on that day, I was the second person into the jury box. The judge told us about the jury selection process and the importance of serving on a jury. When he mentioned the word “disabilities,” I raised my hand. “I have a disability. I had a ruptured aneurysm 30 years ago. I am aphasic.” The judge called forward the lawyers for the defense and the prosecution, and, after they talked briefly, I was excused.

A few days later I heard that the jury found the defendant guilty after only 19 minutes. If I had been in the jury room, it would have taken a lot longer for me to understand the case and decide on the verdict. Would the rest of the jurors been patient with me? As my friend from National Aphasia Association wrote to me later, “The system is not adapted to those who have communication difficulties.”

Service-learning, briefly defined as engaging students in some form of service in the community in order to both advance learning and provide positive benefits for the community, is not a new idea. It has grown out of approaches to learning and civic activism dating back to the early 1900s.

Service-learning is a way for college and university instructors (see resources at Campus Compact, resources for K-12 teachers see the National Youth Service League at nysl.com) to get students out of the campus ‘bubble’ and into communities to see how what they are learning relates to community issues and can be employed sensitively to address these issues. University administrators on the whole like service-learning because it becomes a tangible and in many cases quantifiable way the university contributes to the health and vitality of the broader community.