University of St. Thomas
EN-13: Community Service

While the university does not have a formal program to support employee volunteering during regular work hours, the university allows faculty and staff to participate in a VISION international or domestic service program with undergraduate students during January term or spring break. Faculty and staff VISION program advisors are allowed up to three weeks of paid time off when their participation in the program is pre-approved by their supervisor.

Information about the university's community service programs:
The Center for the Common good is one of the central hubs of community engagement for the University of St. Thomas. The Center hosts a majority of the university’s community engagement efforts but many offices, colleges, and departments across the university are engaged this work important work.  We are happy to connect with you at commongood@stthomas.edu

Community engagement at the University of St. Thomas is woven into our fabric, as part of our institutional mission is to advance the common good. While the Center for the Common Good (CCG) serves as a hub for community engagement and community partner relationship building, the CCG also does much work supporting community engagement efforts that spring up organically across the University. The five main concentrations of community engagement at the University are within the Academic Community Engagement (ACE) Program, Sustainable Communities Partnership (SCP), Business 200 Courses, Student Clubs, and the Tommies Together Volunteer Center (TTVC).

Both the ACE & SCP programs encompass most of curricular community engagement, pairing instructors who are trained in community engagement with approved CCG or SCP community partner organizations in order to focus on a question or issue that the professor, their students, and the community partner develop together. Another community engagement program in the curricular realm is the Business 200 course. All Business students are required to complete this course. In this course, students complete a minimum of 40 hours of volunteer service in the community and reflect on what they’ve learned in a series of in-class discussions.

Co-curricular programming on campus is led by the TTVC. The TTVC coordinates volunteer programs focused on the social issues of food insecurity, housing insecurity, and the education opportunity gap. Students who nurture their personal interests and goals by joining a Student Club have the opportunity to volunteer with an approved CCG community partner. Student Clubs are required to volunteer every semester, and meet with TTVC staff and interns to find a mission match for their community engagement work and sustained partnership. Our largest program is Tutor-Mentor with over 200 students committing to investing in the lives of our local youth at least 1 hour a week for a whole semester. Additionally, we have a strong federal work-study program, academic field placements, and our Dougherty Family College (DFC) internship program.

Not included in our total is data from our graduate school programs. We are working on building the infrastructure to collect that data in the future. We do know that our Law School through clinics, externships, and a public service graduation requirements is investing 15,000+ hours of engagement into our community annually. We hope to include all graduate school data in addition to DFC and undergraduate data in our next STARS report.

Data Notes:
Due to the coronavirus pandemic's impact on programs, we are reporting data for calendar year 2019. The headcount for calendar year reporting includes an extra cohort of students than the academic year. The headcount for January - May includes the class of 2019- 2022, and between Aug - December the headcount includes the class of 2023.

Headcount and hours reported for this credit correspond to the students enrolled in the Dougherty Family College and in four-year undergraduate degree programs.