By John Mugol

Triton’s Call Staff

 

According to its mission statement, one of University of Guam’s objectives is setbe, which is “to serve” in Chamoru.

 

Serving our island and community—in ways such as participating in volunteer work, doing a field outreach, painting bus stops and coordinating food drives for the homeless, to name a few—is beneficial to the university’s standard of teaching.

 

Prior to the Good to Great plan, the university did not require any service learning or community service. Community service and service learning were only being done within student organizations.

 

According to Dr. Angeline Ames, associate professor in sociology and a member of the faculty senate says that students coming to UOG were a bit shocked that middle and high schools on Guam offered forms of services, but not at the university.

 

“Through the good to great process, we were given an implementation report or a plan, that required courses in our program to have a service component,” said Ames.

 

With the Good to Great process, there are now some programs on campus that require community service.

 

Examples include internships in sociology that work closely with nonprofits, communication majors with a track in public relations also work beside nonprofits, social work majors take part in the homeless count and do field work off-island, and plenty of others courses.

 

“It is important for college students to participate in community service as a way to learn, and we all live in one school, one community, and one island,” Ames said.