Service Learning for Students
Learn By Doing Good
Earn Academic Credit For Your Service Today!
Service-learning courses are academic courses where a service project or service experience is part of the overall grade. In the spirit of learning by doing, Cal Poly Pomona faculty, staff and students actively support and engage in service-learning activities that build meaningful and sustainable community partnerships.
What is a Service-Learning Course?
Service-learning courses are a great way for you to gain invaluable professional experience. By structuring courses to provide opportunities to learn, develop and reflect through community projects that tie directly to course instructions, students are able to demonstrate their skills in a professional learning environment.
Past Projects
The Sonic Safari
After working alongside the Pomona Public Library, students designed an after-school workshop that taught music production, beat making, songwriting, and digital audio recording to a variety of students.
Business Consultants of Pomona
Through thorough planning, research, and analysis, students presented their evidence-based consulting to help the Pomona Chamber of Commerce by identifying ways to better support Pomona entrepreneurs for business success.
Physical Educators In Training
By becoming assistant teachers and observers of Cal Poly Pomona's Motor Development Clinic (MDC), students are able to teach clients and develop their motor skills, increase movement behavior, and provide movement experiences that are accessible within a positive environment.
Testimonials
Learning Sustainability Through Service
"Through my liberal studies education, I have been able to receive a deeper understanding of sustainability and wellness through service-learning.”
Growing as an Inclusive Educator
"It has not only taught me how to work with students... but it's also taught me how to better myself as a teacher, whether it would be in the general course or if I go into the adapted course"
Turning Knowledge Into Community Impact
"The knowledge and experience gained from this course are unparalleled by regular courses... being able to address and then try to solve some of these problems for our community is beyond rewarding.”
How do I participate in service learning?
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Enroll in a service-learning course
During your enrollment window, service-learning courses are officially designated by an "s" after the course number, which can be filtered by clicking the drop-down box entitled "Course Attribute" and searching "service-learning". This will return a list of available service-learning courses for the semester.
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Be placed at a service-learning-designated site
Once you have access to your BroncoSERV account, your course will automatically populate to the database within a week before the semester begins and will be shown on your account. Once your course is populated, you will begin your placement in the course. During the placement, you will be asked to select an organization from a list of pre-approved sites designated by your course instructor.
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Complete the required forms
After you are placed at your site, there are 4 required forms that must be completed: Emergency Contact Information, Learning Plan and Participation Guidelines, Visual/Audio Image Release Forms, and Release of Liability - COVID. Once the forms are completed, you can begin your project!
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Log your hours
As you work on completing the project alongside your community partners, you can access BroncoSERV's built-in time sheet through your BroncoSERV profile by clicking your placement number. On the top right of the screen, under the navigation bar, you will find the option "View/Edit Timelog". Click the button, and it will redirect you to a webpage where you can begin recording your hours of service.
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Complete the evaluation form
Once you complete your service-learning course, you can find the form on BroncoSERV under the name "Service Learning/Community Engaged Learning Student Experience Evaluation".
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Service Learning?
Service-learning is an academic course where a service project or service experience is part of the overall grade. In the spirit of learning-by-doing, Cal Poly Pomona faculty, staff and students actively support and engage in service-learning activities that build meaningful and sustainable community partnerships.
While volunteerism is geared toward the advantage of the community, Service-Learning also requires that the student reflect on and learn from the service being performed. The student, as well as the community, will benefit from the activity. Internships or field placements tend to focus solely on student learning. Service-Learning focuses on both the service the community needs and the instructor's learning objectives. Both the community's needs and the student's learning needs will be met.
Course Requirements
Review your course syllabus. Most course instructors will review detailed information about a service-learning or community service project within the first few weeks of the course.
For more information, please consult with your course instructor.
Hours may vary between courses and course instructors. For more information, please review your course syllabus.
Service-Learning is a tool that will help you learn course material. You may not use previous community hours to fulfill your current semester’s hours. It is typically required that the service occurs during the duration of the course while you are studying the course content.
If you would like to begin your hours prior to the start of the course, please contact your course instructor.
Your course instructor is responsible for all course grades and assignments related to your service learning course.
The Department of Service-Learning is not responsible for course grades, adding or dropping a course, and/or course assignments.
For questions related to your course grades and assignments, please consult your course instructor.
If you are unable to find your course on BroncoSERV, it might be because the information has not populated from Bronco Direct. The information should be present within 1-7 days before the semester begins. However, if the course info is still unavailable, please reach out to the Center for Community Engagement (cce@cpp.edu).
Additional Questions
No. Your interview is like a job interview. Several factors play a role in a good match: course goals and objectives, schedules, position availability, the agency's need, the skills and learning interests you bring, etc.
If you need assistance with a resume, cover letter, or other essentials to landing your Service Learning opportunities please contact the Career Center.
If you have not heard back from the sites that you have reached out to, please consult with your instructor for a list of additional recommended sites.
Speak with your site supervisor immediately. If there is a problem, please discuss the matter with the organization’s volunteer coordinator to see if you can explore other available opportunities at that organization.
If the problem persists, first talk with your instructor and then with the Center for Community Engagement for help with a change of settings.
Service-Learning needs to address an important community need and contribute to achieving your course objectives. Job assignments may not be compatible with course learning needs.
Performing service at another agency offers the opportunity to expose you to new situations and experiences.
Overall, we strongly encourage you to serve at another agency.
If you do not live in Pomona, use the search bar in our BroncoSERV database to search by the city you are located in.
If you find a site in your city where you wish to complete your hours, but it is not in our database, please get in touch with your instructor.
Have more questions?
Email us through cce@cpp.edu