Biography

John Duley is Associate Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University, where he retired in 1982. During the 1960's, while employed as a professor and campus minister at MSU, John was instrumental in the development and implementation of the Student Tutorial Education Project (STEP), the first all-student administered educational outreach program of its kind in the country. In the 1970’s, John became a national leader in experiential education, especially in models and techniques for assessing learning outcomes, developing publications, and guiding the field to academic maturity. He was a founder, President and Board member of the National Society for Internships and Experiential Education. He co-authored Strengthening Experiential Education Within Your Institution. John also worked to incorporate service-learning into MSU’s curriculum by serving as the field education coordinator in the experimental Justin Morrill College. In the 1980’s, John served as a mentor for the Kellogg Leadership Program and founded the Greater-Lansing Housing Coalition (GLHC), a community-wide organization dedicated to supporting quality and affordable housing. In the 1990’s, he formed Closing the Digital Gap Program, an initiative to provide low-income residents with access to computers and the Internet. He initiated the Edgewood Village – MSU Service – Learning Tutoring Partnership. In June of 2009, John received the prestigious Gov. George Romney Lifetime Achievement Award from Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. In honor of his accomplishments and in the spirit of service, The John S. Duley Endowment for Service-Learning was also named after him. John is known affectionately by colleagues across the U.S. as the “Grandfather of Service-Learning”.