How Colleges Prepare Seniors for Postgraduate Volunteerism

VOLUNTEERISM

By Heather Joslyn

Last fall, Colleen Gilg, like thousands of other college seniors, was pondering her future. A government and international studies major at the University of Notre Dame from Paxton, Neb., she had traveled to Peru over the summer and become fascinated by it, so she was toying with the idea of committing to a year of volunteer service after graduation. But she hadn’t focused on a specific opportunity until she met a recruiter at a volunteer fair sponsored by Notre Dame. Now, this summer, Ms. Gilg will begin working at a Christian Brothers school in Chimbote, Peru.

She credits Notre Dame and its commitment to preparing students for postgraduate service with helping to cement her decision.

“I’m fairly certain that if I’d been at other schools, it might have been something I thought about, but I doubt I would have found the program right for me and done it,” she says. “It’s a fairly unconventional thing to do, and you get a lot of support you wouldn’t get elsewhere.”

The university not only sponsors a volunteer fair, she says, but also integrates the idea of service into its curriculum and into campus life. It offers frequent chances to meet alumni who have performed postgraduate service, and maintains the Center for Social Concerns, which matches students with volunteer opportunities. The result: Ten percent of all graduating seniors sign up for a year or more of full-time volunteer service, according to Andrea Smith Shappell, director of the center’s Senior Transition Programs.

Colleges and universities typically offer their students chances to perform volunteer work throughout their undergraduate years, but a small number of those institutions, like Notre Dame, also commit resources to helping seniors decide how and where they will volunteer after they get their diplomas. Guiding seniors into volunteer work can pay benefits for the institutions, the students, and charities.

For a college, sending its graduates into volunteer work at home or abroad can affirm its mission, whether based on religious faith or a sense of citizenship. For students, volunteerism can provide a strong foundation for their lives in the “real world” or unmatched preparation for graduate studies, says Jean Seigle, national recruitment director for City Year, a national community-service group for full-time volunteers ages 17 to 24, in Boston. “A student who has spent a year volunteering has gained a very valuable set of skills,” says Ms. Siegle. “They’ve gained a community or national or international perspective, and then go into the work force or return to school much better prepared than they would be following a year of entry-level work in a ‘typical’ job.”

For charities, the direct benefit of volunteerism by new college graduates is self-evident: Nonprofit groups get well-educated, idealistic, enthusiastic workers who don’t require the salaries of permanent employees, says James G. Lindsay, executive director of the Catholic Network of Volunteer Service, in Washington. But smaller organizations may especially benefit when colleges recruit students for postgraduate volunteerism, says Leslie A. Bell, assistant director of the Career Center at Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y., because many smaller charities can’t afford to send representatives on the volunteer-fair circuit and aggressively search for students themselves.

Volunteerism has been championed by the Bush administration and has gained greater prestige in the wake of September 11. But while many colleges are attempting to persuade students that community service is a viable option for them after graduation, not all institutions perform this task effectively, says Mr. Lindsay. His group matches volunteers with more than 230 charities, and as a result, he has seen his share of college volunteer fairs. Some, he says, set up fairs in inconvenient parts of their campuses, fail to advertise the arrival of nonprofit recruiters, or neglect to explain full-time volunteerism to students, letting charity representatives break the news to job-hungry students that they can expect only small stipends if they serve. “There’s so much emphasis on college campuses on career and job market that it’s awkward sometimes,” Mr. Lindsay says.

However, he adds, other schools have a proven track record of producing future volunteers. For example, he says, “All of our programs love to go to the volunteer fair at Notre Dame because they know they’re going to get quality, interested, excited students.”

At Notre Dame, a private, Catholic university, teaching students to integrate service into their lives is part of the institution’s mission, says Ms. Smith Shappell. It has had a position dedicated to facilitating postgraduate volunteer service since the mid-1970s, she says, and emphasizes volunteerism to such a degree, in and out of the classroom, that 80 percent of the student body perform community service at some point during their undergraduate career.

Even seniors who don’t sign up for full-time service are encouraged by Ms. Smith Shappell’s program to donate their time after graduation, guiding them to the university’s network of contacts at charities around the country, which can help students find volunteer options in the cities where they settle after graduation.

‘A Culture of Service Work’

Students today, Ms. Siegle says, are likely to have performed community service in high school, and thus expect to volunteer in college, and after. Many colleges work to foster that interest, with varying degrees of involvement. In addition to the plethora of community-service opportunities available during the academic year, many colleges help students get a taste of full-time volunteerism by offering “alternative” breaks, during which students may spend their vacations working for a charity such as Habitat for Humanity International. And some institutions also integrate service into their curriculum, requiring that students work for local charities as part of their required course work, or spending classroom time discussing the social ramifications of a particular lesson.

“It’s really about establishing a culture of service work, where service just becomes a piece of what you do, along with going to class and working out and taking part in all the other activities that one would ordinarily take part in at college,” says Doug Cutchins, director of the Office of Social Commitment at Grinnell College, in Iowa. To help nurture such a culture, Grinnell sponsors regular discussion groups on volunteerism, provides internship stipends to students who undertake service projects, and helps ready them for postgraduate volunteer assignments by offering a Social Commitment Preparatory Program, which combines 200 hours of community service, academic courses, and an internship, spread over the junior and senior years.

Creating a presence on campus is key for any college’s campaign to guide students into volunteerism, says Ms. Bell, of Hamilton College — and an administrator who recruits for charities must often struggle to be heard by students over the siren song of the job market. “Recruiting is often dominated by employers that have the money to come to schools,” she says. “Students aren’t going to realize you’re there, unless you do lots of publicity to overcome the myth that their college doesn’t care about volunteer work.” Her Career Center maintains a Web site that offers information about postgraduate service to reach students who don’t visit the office, but also routinely sends representatives to campus events to tout the center’s services in person.

Volunteer fairs can also introduce undergraduates to opportunities quickly and painlessly. “People are busy. It’s senior year, too. Nobody’s going to go do a bunch of research on their own,” says Ms. Gilg. Keeping the cost of participation in a volunteer fair low will make charity recruiters feel welcome, says Ms. Siegle, and more willing to attend. The Catholic Network of Volunteer Service recommends coordinating volunteer fairs with those of nearby institutions, to make attendance more financially feasible for nonprofit representatives. (The Catholic Network of Volunteer Service’s Web site maintains a schedule of volunteer fairs around the country. It also provides a free brochure, “How to Sponsor a Great Volunteer Fair.” For copies, contact Matt Koerner at the Catholic Network, 1410 Q Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., 20009-3808, (202) 332-6000, or mkoerner@cnvs.org.)

Beginning this spring at the University of California at Berkeley, seniors will get one final pitch for volunteerism as they are leaving campus, according to Megan Voorhees, program director of the university’s Cal Corps Public Service Center. She says her office intends to distribute free copies of Making a Difference: Your Guide to Volunteering and Community Service, a book by the urban-planning professor Arthur Blaustein, to every graduate at commencement this spring.

The Role of Alumni

Alumni who have performed volunteer work can help give students another perspective on postgraduate service. Some colleges, like Creighton University, sponsor informal gatherings featuring alumni guest speakers who take questions from students about their volunteer stints.

At Princeton University, such alumni have formed their own group — Princeton Project 55. Under the umbrella of the Center for Civic Leadership, the project was formed in 1989 by members of Princeton’s class of 1955. Although Project 55 is independent of the university, it dedicates itself to placing recent college graduates in internships and one-year fellowship stints at nonprofit organizations around the country. During their service, they are paired with a mentor who is a Princeton graduate. “A number of these fellows stay in the nonprofit sector, and a number of them stay at the organization where they work,” says Laura Hardman Collins, Public Interest Program director for Project 55. And even if they don’t, she says, “Their experience working for a nonprofit organization can affect the way they practice law, or medicine, or the way they run a corporation.”

To create an ideal system for funneling seniors into postgraduate service, a college should enlist all administrators on campus who would come in contact with students interested in service, says Ken Reed-Bouley, associate director of the Creighton Center for Service and Justice. “Hopefully it wouldn’t be relegated to just the campus ministry or just the Newman Center or just the career center,” he says. Although a career center would be likely to reach the most students, he says, giving students a variety of ways to get access to information about volunteerism ultimately reaches more.

The administrators charged with directing seniors into service need to be prepared to discuss each student’s interests with him or her in depth and guide them to very specific resources, says Ms. Bell. “Most people who come in don’t say, ‘I’m interested in volunteering, ‘” she says. “They have an environmental concern, or a health concern, or are concerned about poor people or Latinos.”

Over time, an institution may discover that it has a student demand for more specialized guidance in choosing volunteer assignments. For example, at Berkeley, says Ms. Voorhees, students are already exceptionally committed to community service, so her job is somewhat different than it might be at a less socially conscious campus. Rather than focusing mostly on recruiting students for volunteerism, she says, she concentrates on consulting with student groups that perform service to polish the professional skills they will need to do the work.

By contrast, the University of Kansas began a campuswide effort two years ago to promote “civic literacy” among students, and has gradually stepped up its efforts to recruit students for postgraduate volunteer work. Last fall, the university added a part-time position for a Peace Corps representative, who recruits students through the institution’s career center, according to Ann J. Hartley, associate director of the university’s Career and Employment Services office.

Overcoming Obstacles

Administrators also need to be prepared to help seniors overcome the obstacles that prevent them from transforming their intentions to volunteer into reality. Many students graduate with heavy debt loads, but participation in some programs, such as AmeriCorps, can earn volunteers loan deferments and educational grants, points out Mr. Reed-Bouley. “You don’t make money,” he tells students, “but you don’t lose any, either.”

Many seniors also face the disapproval of parents, significant others, and friends, who may not understand why students aren’t getting “real” jobs or fret about them taking assignments far from home, says Mr. Cutchins. In such cases, he says, a little hand-holding may be in order: “I spend a lot of time on the phone with parents — ‘Yes, they’ll be protected. Yes, they’re going to be fine. No, they won’t catch horrible diseases.’”

Parental fears of the danger of overseas assignments have been heightened since September 11, many college volunteer recruiters say, but Ms. Bell says she hasn’t heard any such concerns expressed by the graduating volunteers themselves. Because of the threat of domestic terrorism, she says, “If anything, they feel less secure at home.” And young people aren’t easily dissuaded from adventure, she notes: “I don’t think that students 21, 22 years old are worried about getting on a plane anyway.”

Colleges can make a difference in helping a senior “sell” the idea of volunteerism to unenthusiastic parents, says Ms. Gilg. At Notre Dame, students heading off to postgraduate service assignments are feted with a “graduation” ceremony at which the university’s chancellor speaks. For students, she says, it’s a chance to show their parents, “My college, that you’ve helped me pay for, they see value in this. I’m not throwing away my education.”

Preparing students for postgraduate service, says Mr. Cutchins, gets to the “core” of a college’s mission. “Having an educated populace who are committed to making the world a better place?” he muses. “That’s one of the reasons we educate people.”

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