We offer several opportunities that equip students with the skills and knowledge needed to meaningfully engage in the community, many of which can be included in your course or training.
Volunteer Opportunities
We coordinate a variety of volunteer opportunities on and off campus that are open to all students, and we welcome faculty and staff to include them in their curriculum and training programs. If you don’t see something that meets your needs, browse our Student Volunteer Opportunities page or contact us and we will be happy to help connect you to the right community organization.
We utilize Engage UNCW powered by the GivePulse platform, which allows community organizations to create a profile page and post volunteer opportunities for UNCW faculty, staff and students to view. It also allows faculty to manage academic community-engaged learning or service-learning courses. The platform provides useful tools for connecting with community partners, managing student reflections, for students to submit their service hours, and for you to manage student service hours and course outcomes. If you would like your course to be tagged so that you can access these features, contact feliceg@uncw.edu.
We also host a Non-Profit and Volunteer Fair each September. We typically host 40+ community organizations and encourage students, faculty, and staff to attend and identify new opportunities to engage with the community. Information about this year’s event can be found in August on Engage UNCW.
Education and Training
We have developed the Community Engagement Essentials training that faculty and staff can adopt and use as a course assignment, job training or volunteer activity to help prepare students for engagement in a mutually beneficial experience with a community partner. The training is structured around the “What? So What? Now What?” reflection framework and includes community engagement definitions and approaches, understanding issues and the agencies working to address them in our community, and personal reflection and goal development.
These modules have been shared to the Canvas Commons, which means that anyone with a UNCW account can access the content and import it into their course. For instructions about how to import, please, check out this link. The course you will search for is “DEV-Community Engagement Essentials.”
If you are interested in bringing an in-person workshop into your course/training, we also facilitate sessions on a variety of topics, including Civically Engaged Leadership, the UN Sustainable Development Goals and ways to get meaningfully involved in the community. To request an in-person workshop, submit the workshop request form. If you have questions, please email serve@uncw.edu.
Hunger Help
We support Hawk’s Harvest — UNCW’s student food pantry — by promoting the need for donations, recruiting volunteers, and helping to advertise the resource to students, staff, and faculty. In addition to providing groceries, students without a meal plan can apply for meal swipes through the Swipes for Seahawks program each semester. More information can be found on the Hawk’s Harvest page.
Please refer students you believe would benefit from these resources and consider sponsoring a food drive in your department! You can also make a donation online through the Employee Giving options to support the pantry. Select “Student Food Pantry Support Fund” when making your donation. We also encourage you to include both Hawk’s Harvest and Swipes for Seahawks in your list of campus resources on course syllabi.
