Enjoy serving your community and get out of the classroom.
Earn credit outside the classroom. With service-learning courses, you'll make learning an adventure, experience the real world, serve your community, help others, have fun and still get credit. More cool benefits:
- Learn by doing
- Serve your community
- Experience citizenship
- Improve self-confidence
- Connect with community issues
- Improve personal skills
- Expand network opportunities
- Build your resume. (Employers like to see you are more than a GPA.)
How it works
Service-learning classes are classes without borders. You enroll in them the same as with other MCC classes. Examples of service learning include:
- Biology: work with a local wildlife preserve to help clean up a waterway and study first hand how plants, animals, and ecosystems are affected by human activity.
- Theater: work behind the scenes at a city theater and with staff on costumes, lighting, sound design and acting.
- Accounting: help area residents prepare and file taxes during tax season.
Service options
- Do it in class: integrated class: For this course, the service you do is like a homework assignment: You and your classmates complete at least 15 hours of service as part of your class. Your instructor assigns a journal, paper, or other assignment to see what you've learned.
- Do it on your own: component class: This stand-alone class (1 to 3-hour options) adds service experience to a course you are taking or extends the experience of the one you've finished. For every hour you take, you contribute 40 hours of community service and then share your experience in a journal, paper, or other assignment. You work on your own and at your own pace.
Frequently asked questions
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A service project isn't busy work added on to existing work. Because it is an important part of your learning it is often substituted for another major assignment. Or it might become a part of your research. If you're concerned, contact your instructor before enrolling to learn what's expected of you.
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Many scholarships have service as part of their requirements, such as the Longview Hispanic scholarship, the Kevin O'Neil Phillips scholarship and the Plaza Rotary scholarship.
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The stand-alone service-learning class is meant to piggyback with another class that you are taking or have just taken. If you want to enroll in one, you should contact the instructor to see if this is right for you. You and your instructor will develop a project and there will be an assignment that pulls your experience together.
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You'll fill out an online hourly log sheet. Print it and get it signed by someone with the agency you served.