The Public Service Center can support graduate students by providing ways to connect to community organizations, by offering resources for incorporating community-engaged work into your teaching and scholarship, and by creating opportunities to support those participating in community-engaged learning and public service.
Here are some places to start.
Community-Based Teaching and Scholarship
There are many ways for graduate students to get involved in community-based teaching and scholarship.
Partner with the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) program. ACES — a partnership of the Public Service Center and the American Cultures Center — provides space to explore community-engaged scholarship and collaborative projects with community partners, supporting reflective engagement on social issues.
Graduate students can serve as ACES Chancellor’s Public Fellows to support the development, facilitation, and implementation of an American Cultures Engaged Scholarship course.
Graduate students are also invited to participate in the ACES Graduate Learning Community to engage in a workshop series exploring the importance of and connections among their academic studies, teaching, and research and their community relationships and social justice efforts.
Applications for ACES Fellows and the graduate learning community will be available on the American Cultures ACES webpage when the programs are recruiting or by signing up for the AC newsletter. If you are interested, please contact publicservice@berkeley.edu, and we will connect you with any open opportunities.
Support the facilitation of a Public Service Center program. Some Public Service Center programs utilize Graduate Assistants to co-manage programs, facilitate training and reflection, and provide 1-1 mentoring to undergraduate students engaged in public service. Most positions are selected in the spring. If you are interested, please contact publicservice@berkeley.edu, and we will connect you with any open opportunities.
Apply for the Chancellor’s Awards for Public Service. Each year, the Chancellor honors the work of faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, staff, and community partnerships that demonstrate outstanding contributions to the public good. Nominations open in fall each year; recipients are selected in March and honored at a public reception at the end of spring semester.
Volunteering and Internships
Look for opportunities through VolunteerMatch, a searchable database for internships and volunteer opportunities.
Resources
Explore a variety of resources including our Toolkit for Designing Community-Based Courses (PDF).
In May 2016, Cindy Dinh and Paul Monge received the Chancellor’s Award for Public Service in the Graduate Student category. As students at the UC Berkeley School of Law, they have been applying their training to establish a program that will enable students to automatically register to vote when they enroll at a UC, CSU, or community college. By removing barriers to voter registration, Paul and Cindy hope to encourage greater voter turnout and increase civic participation among young people in California. As Cindy noted, “We want to build a democracy that’s really inclusive of voices of young people.”