6 Historically, a liberal arts education was thought to “liberate” students from the narrow perspective of experiential learning. Paradoxically, experiential learning is increasingly being used to broaden a liberal arts education. This chapter provides a discussion on three signature experiential learning practices, and suggests these practices can be implemented across disciplines to enrich the learning experience. How Do You Use Experiential Learning to Bridge the Classroom and the Real World? Victoria Simpson Beck, Stephanie K. Boys, Hannah J. Haas, Karen N. King To become competent, humane, public servants, students must not only un- derstand the theories and best practices in their feld, they must also learn how to apply them on the job. Public servants conceive of their primary mis- sion as promoting the public welfare, typically by working in public agen- cies or nonproft organizations. Because most public service jobs require interpersonal contact that is either face to face or voice to voice (Guy, New- man, and Mastracci 2008), it is essential that students have the opportunity to practice these skills under the watchful eye of experienced teachers, not only in the classroom but also in the feld. This type of learning is a system- atic approach to applied learning and has evolved out of experiential learn- ing theory, which defnes learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience” (Kolb 1984, 41). In this chapter, we share strategies for relating classroom learning to the real world of public service using the disciplines of public admin- istration, social work, and criminal justice. To help students apply what they have learned in their classes, each profession has adopted, formally or informally, signature pedagogies that organize “the fundamental ways in which future practitioners are educated for their chosen professions” (Shulman 2004, 52). Although these signature pedagogies have proven to be valuable resources, they are not the exclusive domain of any feld of study. The disciplines represented here have borrowed liberally from other disciplines in developing their signature pedagogies and vice versa. In the NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING, no. 151, Fall 2017  2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/tl.20251 97