Purpose
Public service is an effective means of education that is community building, capacity building, life enhancing, and educationally valuable. However, graduate students at MIT have been dramatically under-served by public service offerings, which have traditionally been focused on undergraduates. We proposed to develop resources and models to support increased graduate student involvement in public service. We developed these assets:
- Focus groups, workshops, luncheons and dinners on the topic of graduate student public service
- Financial support and assistance for Graduate Student Volunteer Day
- Grant funding and Fellowships for graduate student service projects
- IDEAS Competition award for graduate student teams
- The Involve Conference: Engaging Graduate Students in Public Service, a periodic, multi-campus event
Impact
The results are gradual and difficult to pinpoint but noticeable:
- Graduate Student Volunteer Day involves 150 students annually
- More graduate students participate in existing PSC outreach programs or create grant-funded programs of their own
- 30% of the Public Service Fellows are now graduate students
- The IDEAS Competition award for graduate student teams has been competitively sought and won each year
- The first involve Conference took place April 20, 2006
- The PSC is working with other departments to develop resources for graduate students such as the new DUSP-PSC Internships and the Sloan Non-Profit Internship Fund
Back to Graduate Student Life Grants 2006 Index page
