IARSLCE grew out of the Annual International K-H Service-Learning Research Conference which began as an idea championed by Shelley H. Billig, Ph.D. of RMC Research Corporation and Andrew Furco, Ph.D. of the University of California Berkeley. They obtained seed funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which was managed by Dr. Billig at RMC Research Corporation, and helped to support the first five years of the annual research conference. At the time of the first conference in Berkeley, CA in 2001, there were no other comparable meetings that highlighted research on service-learning and facilitated information exchange and dialogue among scholars, practitioners, funders, and students interested in research on service-learning. Click here for more information on the past conferences.

Each year the conference generates a peer-reviewed volume highlighting exemplary papers from the conference. More information on this series, Advances in Service-Learning Research, is available here.

As the field has developed, the scope of the conference has expanded beyond service-learning to embrace a wide range of scholarly work related to community engagement and various pedagogies, including service-learning. A highlight at each conference is the identification of young scholars who may be current graduate students or junior faculty who are recognized for their roles as Emerging Scholars. An Annual Award for Distinguished Research is presented at the conference each year. In 2008 an Early Career Research Award and a Dissertation Award will be presented for the first time.

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