Getting Involved
The Meelia Center for Community Service is the nerve center of Saint Anselm's bustling service community. The center, according to the school, "employs nearly sixty student service leaders, who in turn recruit, place, and support over 200 volunteers and 210 service learners each semester who perform weekly service in over thirty community agencies. An additional 350 volunteers serve in occasional one-day service events. Last year, the Meelia Center alone accounted for the coordination of 20,000 service hours by Saint Anselm students."

Not all service activity channels through the Meelia Center, though. The Office of Campus Ministry is also extremely active, running "three programs that provide opportunities for students to perform community service and become student-service leaders." The programs are Spring Break Alternative, which coordinates service projects "from Maine to Honduras" for 150 students; Urban Immersion, which sends groups of eight to ten students to service projects in the city for a weekend; and Road to Hope, a fundraising event in which "thirty students raise money for local charities by walking 130 miles from Lewiston, Maine to Saint Anselm College in time for the start of the academic year. The program was initiated by a student and to date has raised more than $25,000 for various charitable organizations along the walking route."

Political junkies will enjoy the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, through which "students have tremendous access to guest speakers, which range from Nobel Peace Prize winners, presidential candidates, noted historians, novelists, renowned documentary filmmakers, pollsters, and the media elite." The institute has become a "must-stop" for presidential candidates, giving undergrads "unmatched opportunities to engage in the presidential primary process."

The school points out that "the extensive use of students as service leaders and the leadership model in which students are trained and supported to manage community partnerships" distinguishes the school's service programs from those of other schools. Another distinctive feature: "All new students are introduced to Saint Anselm's service commitment through the New Student Day of Service. As part of orientation, students are sent in teams of thirty to partnership sites and other community non-profit agencies. Upperclassmen work throughout the spring and summer to organize the entire event, which involves ten to fifteen sites in Greater Manchester."

Campus Culture of Engagement
Students come to Saint Anselm knowing that "part of our school mission is to learn through service. We at Saint Anselm believe that one can obtain knowledge from a book, but the true knowledge comes from both the books and experience. Through our service-learning/civic-engagement program, students learn skills necessary to challenge policy and work for social change." Undergraduates embrace the school's mission. In fact, not only do they serve enthusiastically, but they also spend additional time looking for ways to increase service opportunities. Explains one student, "This year, we initiated the Learning Liberty Program in which students, faculty, staff, [and] members of the monastic community met in study circles to address the issue of how civic engagement is being addressed at Saint Anselm."

Connecting Service with the Classroom
"Service-learning is one of the fastest growing things here," reports one student, adding that "students love the opportunity to not only learn in class but learn in real-life situations." According to the school, "eleven academic departments and more than twenty courses at Saint Anselm offer service-learning opportunities. This includes the social sciences (sociology, psychology, criminal justice, and nursing) and less traditional departments (physics, computer science, theology, and humanities). Twenty-seven percent of this year's graduating class has had at least one service-learning experience during their four years."

The school is committed to developing its service-learning programs further. Administrators tell us that "for the past three years, Saint Anselm College has hosted a Student Service-Learning Conference where students, faculty, and community partners from around the state present their service-learning experiences. This opportunity to share models and strategies has been well received, especially by colleges looking to improve and develop new connections between service and academics."

Impact on Community and Students
Formal school-community partnerships at Saint Anselm include "one of the state's largest public child-care centers, several public schools, a large county nursing home, a facility for delinquent youth, an agency for homeless teens, and a soup kitchen for youth." The school has been recruiting new partners each year; the latest is the English for New Americans program, "which provides ESL and cultural-adjustment assistance to refugees and immigrants in Manchester. Currently over 150 ESL students from thirty-two countries are enrolled. Some Saint Anselm students actually teach classes under the supervision of the program director." Additional community partnerships are managed by Campus Ministry.

Saint Anselm has a major presence in local schools through the New Hampshire Alliance for Civic Engagement, founded by the New Hampshire Institute of Politics. This "statewide coalition of K-12 schools, youth-service organizations, colleges, universities, and public- and private-sector partners [works to] enhance civic engagement in New Hampshire by strengthening the knowledge, skills, and behaviors essential for active citizenship."

Student Financial Support for Service
Saint Anselm offers "a number of scholarships that reward good citizenship and public service," including the Trinity High School Scholarship, awarded to a graduate of the Manchester high school based on his/her academic and service records; the O'Farrill Scholarship, earmarked for Hispanic students active in service; and the Holmes Scholarship, "a full-tuition scholarship offered to one or two seniors who demonstrate leadership in public service, assistance to others, and exceptional involvement in College life." Also, "a variety of endowed scholarships offer funding for students who serve as Spring Break Alternative leaders." Finally, the school points out that "most of the student-leadership positions at the Meelia Center are filled by federal work-study students. Their leadership work is their campus job, although what they put into their work and what they gain from it far surpasses traditional work-study employment."