Mount St. Mary’s College, Los Angeles - Volunteering and Service Learning

Volunteering at the Mount

Giving back to the community through volunteer service is a long established practice at Mount St. Mary’s College. We encourage students to volunteer throughout their time at the Mount. In order to make this as easy as possible, the Office of Community Engagement provides several ways you can volunteer.

The office of Community Engagement works with over 35 Community Partners and organizations throughout the city of Los Angeles to provide a number of volunteer sites to fill students’ interests. Check out our Community Partner Spotlight here.

There are a number of great websites for people looking to volunteer in their communities. Please take the time to explore them. These are a few that the Office Of Community Engagement recommends:

Please contact the Office of Community Engagement at 213-477-2577 or email Kimberly Terrill at kterrill@msmc.la.edu for more information about current volunteer opportunities, or log on to the Mount Career Network to see a number of different volunteer and internship opportunities.

Service Learning at the Mount

Mount St. Mary’s defines Service Learning as a partnership between the student, the employer, the faculty, and/or the Community Engagement Office. Simply defined, service learning is experiential learning that involves students in important community work while applying lessons learned in the classroom. Students take the ideas, concepts, and theories presented in their coursework and enter the "field" to examine their applicability in the real world as they endeavor to make a difference in it.

In a Service Learning course, the student has the opportunity to earn academic credit for working and studying in the area related to the course objective. These learn-work experiences require a specific number of hours at work as determined by course instructor, as well as regular contact between the faculty member, the student, and the service leaning site. Faculty supervise and evaluate the student’s service learning experience by speaking directly with the service learning supervisor and through written evaluations and with the student.

The Office of Community Engagement provides a number of tools for students involved in Service Learning. You may find some of the following helpful. Most are shown as a PDF. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat, you can download a free version here.

If you are interested in learning more about Service Learning or if you are looking for a Service Learning site, please contact the Office of Community Engagement at 213-477-2577 or email Kim Terrill at kterrill@msmc.la.edu.

For faculty members interested in more information, please visit our For Faculty page or contact Paul Green, the Service Learning Faculty Coordinator or click here.