Graduate Students

Getting involved in your local community provides a unique way to learn about the place you call home. Check out our programs and resources for finding local organizations and public service opportunities below.
 

Cal Corps Programs
Oakland Community Builders: Community Organizing
Shinnyo Fellowship: Funding to Pursue Social Change Projects
Magnolia Project: Rebuilding the Gulf Coast
Alternative Breaks: Immersion Experiences over Spring Break
BUILD: Literacy Tutoring Program
(All of the above opportunities are open to undergraduate and graduate students.)
 

Local
VolunteerMatch: Search our database of local organizations and opportunities
City of Berkeley: Commission openings
Graduate Assembly: Community Outreach Working Group, City Advocacy Committee
Berkeley Law: Clinics
Science@Cal: Outreach opportunities around science and technology
 

Planning a One-Time Service Event
If you are planning a one-time service event, see these basic guidelines to set the foundation for a successful event.

Internships enable you to contribute specialized skills and knowledge to a community organization while gaining new expertise. Check out the existing internship programs and resources below, or contact Suzan Akin if you would like help identifying community organizations with whom you could design your own public service internship.

Public Service Internships
ACES Chancellor's Public Fellows: Engaged Scholarship and Course Development
Berkeley Board Fellows (GSPP, Public Health, and Haas students)
Career Center: Internship listings and resources for finding internships
DataCenter Internship Program: Social Justice Research Internships
Graduate Fellows Training Program at UC Berkeley's Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
VolunteerMatch: The Cal Corps Public Service Center's searchable database for internships and volunteer opportunities
 

Approaching Community Partners
If you are looking to design your own internship, consider these best practices for approaching community organizations with a proposal. Remember that community organization staff are often pressed for time; be thoughtful about your reasons for seeking an internship, be realistic about the amount of time you can commit, and have concrete ideas of the work you would like to contribute to the organization. Be open to listening to the community organization's needs and their capacity for hosting you as an intern. It is also important to approach the organization with humility, and respect for the expertise of their staff and constituents.

Community-Based Research is called different things in different disciplines, but regardless of the setting it involves co-creating and implementing research projects with community in order to achieve change. Cal Corps Public Service Center can help connect you to potential community partners, find current faculty and graduate students doing community-based work on campus, and offers workshops and resources to support graduate students in this area.
 

Community-Based Research Workshops
Planned by a group of graduate students called the Seminar Planning Committee, Cal Corps hosts 3 to 4 workshops per year exploring topics relevant to community-based research. Events are advertised on this website, the Public Service Calendar, the graduate student newsletter, and through graduate department listservs. To be added to the listserv or become a member of the Seminar Planning Committee, contact Suzan Akin.
 

Public Health 219C: CBPR in Public Health, taught by Meredith Minkler
A popular course on campus taught by a well-known scholar in the field of community-based participatory research. Open to students from all disciplines. The goal of the seminar is to provide doctoral and advanced master's degree students with an understanding of theories, principles, and strategies of community-based participatory research (CBPR) and related traditions.
 

Approaching Community Partners
If you are looking for a community partner with whom to design your community-based research, consider the following best practices for approaching community organizations:

• Community-based research is about research WITH community not ON community. The community is not a laboratory for experiments, but a meaningful partner and owner in research.
• Remember that community organization staff are often pressed for time; be thoughtful about your reasons for seeking a research partnership with them, be realistic about the amount of time you can commit, and have concrete ideas of the work you would like to contribute to the organization.
• Listen to the community organization's needs and their capacity for partnering with you. Be ready to shape, adapt, and change your research goals and method to respond to these factors.
• Approach the organization with humility, and respect for the expertise of their staff and constituents.
• Community-based research requires developing strong relationships with community partners, and this takes time and investment.

Community-Campus Partnerships for Health offers many resources for conducting community-based research in an ethical way (across fields that extend beyond health).

We can help you connect to research, best practices and campus colleagues in the fields of service-learning, engaged scholarship, civic engagement and community-based participatory research (CBPR). See below for places to start, and contact Suzan Akin if you have specific requests.

Campus Resources:

• Handbook for Designing Community-Based Courses: A guide to developing community-based courses created by Cal Corps Public Service Center and geared toward the UC Berkeley campus.
   
• Experiential Learning Guidelines: UC Berkeley's campus guidelines for risk management in credit-bearing experiential learning activities.
   
• Engaged Scholarship Listserv for Graduate Students: Periodic emails with campus and community happenings around engaged scholarship, relevant workshops, and resources for publishing and funding.
   
• Graduate Assembly: UC Berkeley's graduate student representative body. The Community Outreach and City Advocacy committees may be of particular interest to those who want to get involved in the community beyond campus.
   
• GSI Teaching and Resource Center: Supports Graduate Student Instructors at UC Berkeley with workshops and other resources around teaching and learning.
   

External Resources:

• Bay Area Service-Learning Network: A network of faculty and staff at local higher education institutions who meet 2-3 times per year to discuss issues relevant to the field. Contact Suzan Akin if you would like to be added to the listserv.
   
• Campus Compact: A national coalition of over 1100 college and university presidents who are "committed to fulfilling the civic purposes of higher education." Offers resources to support and promote community-based work, including training, consultation, funding, recognition, and more.
   
• Community-Campus Partnerships for Health: A community-partnerships organization with many resources for course, research and partnership development that can be applied across all disciplines; also has resources for publishing and funding.
   
• Imagining America: Artists & Scholars in Public Life: A consortium of institutions and their partners which focuses on the role of the arts and humanities in taking action to improve communities.
   
• National Service-Learning Clearinghouse: Supports the service-learning community by providing resources, readings, sample syllabi, discussion lists and much more for higher education and K-12 institutions.
   
• TRUCEN: The Research University Civic Engagement Network is a collaborative of Research 1 institutions exploring the unique roles and responsibilities of research institutions in community engagement. In particular, note the "New Times Demand New Scholarship" report and the TRUCEN Engaged Scholarship Toolkit.