Northeastern University
EN-13: Community Service

https://issuu.com/northeasterncrossing7/docs/cbar_2019_final https://issuu.com/northeasterncrossing7/docs/nu382_cbar_report_2020_r2 Northeastern strives to give back to Boston neighborhoods, especially those surrounding the University. Some of the numerous examples by which this is accomplished include: Volunteer projects and partnerships with local and city agencies; programming/events that integrate service and learning; research to benefit the local communities; direct support to organizations; clothing drives, food donations, and toy drives; public programming; creating jobs and supporting business development; investments in educational achievement; fostering social, racial, and health equity. More specifically, the Office of Community Service provides multiple opportunities as follow: The Office of Community Service supports individuals and groups by identifying interests and skills, finding and planning one-time projects, doing presentations about our local neighborhoods, and helping connect folks with local organizations who have identified a need. Additionally, Community Service allows employees to serve as University representatives on the annual Alternative Break trips, as well as engage with the Office through Service Days, Volunteer Fairs and its annual Fall Service Day. Additionally, the Office of Community Service engages an extensive faculty network through its Community Engaged Teaching & Research team. The Office of Community Service engaged a total of 3,460 Northeastern student volunteers totaling 113,000+ service hours. However, these numbers reflect programs led by City & Community Engagement only. Currently, the Office of Community Service doesn’t have a system designed to capture all of the service that happens across campus though it is known that quite a bit of service is completed by Athletics, service-focused student Clubs, sororities and fraternities, individual students and more. Therefore, at this time, it is not possible to provide a more accurate number of hours per student, though if one calculated that using what data is available, Northeastern students engaged in approximately 32 hours/student. This figure in and of itself is not especially accurate since some of the students complete 300 hours of service with a program called “Jumpstart”, while others may participate in a five hour event for Service Day. Also, unfortunately, Northeastern does not include community engagement on a student’s resume, although there are a few ways this learning is captured; students who take service-learning courses can count the service experience toward their experiential learning requirements, and students can capture civic engagement in the SAIL platform. A noteworthy update is that the Office of Community Service recently invested in a system called “Collaboratory”, which is hoped will better capture all of the Community Engagement that happens across campus. Collaboratory is less focused on numbers of students and hours, and more focused on the breadth and depth of community engagement across the institution, however it is hoped that Collaborator will provide useful data once it is utilized. The Director of Community Service is currently working with Human Resources Management (HRM) to build out more explicit opportunities for employee community engagement. This begins with adding language to the HRM website with clear ways that employees can get involved in the broader community. Community Services hopes that HRM will offer some incentives but that is not yet implemented; the Office of Community Service supports employee engagement efforts in the community, and works with numerous employee groups campus-wide to plan one-time or ongoing staff community engagement. The Facilities Management team has conducted regular one-time service projects for many years, and D’Amore McKim School of Business recently created a Community Engagement Task Force for staff and students.

https://issuu.com/northeasterncrossing7/docs/cbar_2019_final https://issuu.com/northeasterncrossing7/docs/nu382_cbar_report_2020_r2