Opinion: Offering college credits for voluntary service makes sense
Few things have a greater effect on a young person's life than to sacrifice time as a volunteer for a higher cause. The University of Utah understands this, and its new program to reward such efforts with college credit, announced to us last week by President Taylor Randall, should be applauded.
The university will begin offering up to 12 credit hours to students who can demonstrate they have gained valuable experience through voluntary service off campus. This would include service with the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps, any type of humanitarian or community service, a stint in the military, or religious missionary service. The university said credit will be awarded 'based on the type and duration' of this service and on a case-by-case basis.
This is a policy that redefines, in a positive way, a university's role in the community it serves. It makes sense, especially in a state that has been consistently ranked as a national leader in fostering the spirit of volunteerism.
One such ranking, conducted by AmeriCorps, found that Utah led the nation with a 68.2% 'informal helping rate.' Informal helping, the report said, consists of people helping 'their neighbors informally with tasks like running errands or watching each other's children …' The national rate was 54%.
But the state's formal volunteer rate, defined as helping through formal organizations, also led the nation at 46.6%.
Voluntary service blesses communities and alleviates the burdens of governments at all levels. The report said 1.2 million Utahns volunteered formally, while 1.7 million did so informally in 2023, the most recent year studied.
As the website Govpilot.com puts it, 'Volunteers will often engage in events and programs that help address social issues such as homelessness, poverty, or lack of proper education systems. Communities will feel more connected if they are able to make changes to these important social issues. Volunteers that assist the most underserved members of the community also positively impact upward mobility.'
In addition to blessing communities, the volunteer is often changed by his or her own acts of service. That is certainly the case with young people who enter military service, and it definitely describes those who commit a portion of their lives to full-time missionary service.
The university's press release quoted Elder Clark G. Gilbert, a General Authority Seventy and the commissioner of the Church Educational System of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 'Our young adults who serve missions come home more mature and capable and ready to continue investing and contributing to their communities,' he said.
The leadership training and work ethic instilled through formal voluntary service is difficult to duplicate in any other form, and it adds immeasurable long-term benefits to the community being served.
University officials said voluntary experience will be rewarded even if it took place before 2025. In addition, students will still be eligible for the current 16 credit hours for foreign language mastery, which would be applied on top of the new 12 credit hour award for service.
University President Randall told the Deseret News Editorial Board he hopes to make the campus more attractive to Latter-day Saints. In the process, however, the new program will also make a bold statement as to what the university values and honors in its students. That message will go far beyond missionary service, sending the signal that formal voluntary service of any kind ought to be a foundational part of a student's broad educational experience.
Mitzi Montoya, the school's provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, said the university wants to be a place where experiential learning is prioritized.
The beauty of that policy is that experiential learning seldom ends with one experience. It often blossoms into a lifetime of service to others, and that will reverberate for years in immeasurable ways.
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