Office of Student and Community Engagement

Our medical students engage in community service to improve the life of residents in the cities the students live, study and work.  Students are highly encouraged to complete one service-learning activity each year in response to community-identified issues and to learn about the context in which service is provided, the connection between their service and their academic coursework, and their roles as citizens and professionals (LCME, June 2022).

Beginning with MD Class of 2018, all USF MCOM medical students are expected to complete a total of 40 hours of community service, which includes at least one service learning project to graduate. Students may complete their community service hours at both USF and non-USF affiliated organizations.

While students will have until the end of Fall semester MD four to meet the graduation requirement, we recommend completing the requirement prior to beginning MD year three clinical rotations.

We are here to help support students in their community service and service learning projects. Please review the information and contact us should you have any questions about the program.

Many existing community service and/or volunteer opportunities,  at both USF and non-USF affiliated organizations, may be adapted to become a service-learning project; i.e. International mission trips, USF Health Service Corps events, student organization sponsored activities, etc. Projects done as a course requirement may qualify. Please email shirleys@usf.edu for verification. 

The project must include the following components to be service-learning:

1. Preparation
   1. Increase knowledge base of treating underserved populations;
   2. Develop positive perceptions of treating underserved populations;
   3. Involve the community in the service-learning design and implementation;
   4. Establish collaborative and mutually beneficial partnerships with the community;
   5. Address needs identified by the community;
   6. Develop intentional learning objectives.
      
      
2. Service
   1. Fulfill an authentic community need;
   2. Provide useful or helpful contribution to the community;
   3. Address real-world needs and problems identified by the community;
   4. Provide an application of educational content.
      
      
3. Reflection (Response recorded in Archivum by marking the activity as "Most Meaningful")
   1. Link service to professional and personal development;
   2. Prompt deep thinking and analysis about one’s self and one’s relationship to society;
   3. Occur before, during, and after the service experience;
   4. Examine preconceptions and assumptions regarding roles and responsibilities as citizens.

The Morsani College of Medicine requires all students to serve the campus or community by teaching for at least 20 hours during the four years prior to graduation. Teaching medicine to others is a terrific way to test your own mastery, and provides endless satisfaction in how you help others.  We offer many ways to accomplish this requirement on the MCOM campus, but you may also fulfill this by teaching in the community. Note that the teaching must be connected to medicine, and must be in excess of the required patient teaching you do on clerkships and in other clinical courses. If you were paid to teach, the hours can not be counted toward meeting the teaching requirement.

We are here to help support students in their teaching activities. Please review the information to the right and contact us should you have any questions about the program.

To qualify, your teaching experience must be in the medical or public health domains, as judged by Ms. Shirley Smith, MA. If you were paid to teach, the hours can not be counted toward meeting the teaching requirement.

You may submit the same activity for both the Service Learning requirement and the Teaching requirement, but the hours are counted separately (so the same activity used for both would require 40 hours for Service Learning and 20 hours for Teaching, for a total of 60 hours). The reflection would be separate for the two activities, as they have different aims. 

Note on tutoring vs teaching experience

Hours that are logged as tutoring can be used towards your teaching hours graduation requirement, as long as you were not paid. No more than 10 hours of tutoring can be counted toward this requirement. Teaching experience hours need to be logged as a new activity. 

How to log community service, service learning project or teaching experience hours

Once logged into Archivum, navigate to the Actions tab at the top. Click on "Create New Activity."

Click on the "Type" drop-down and choose "Community Service" or "Teaching Experience."

Create a new activity for each individual community service or teaching activity experience (you will be able to input hours on next page.)

Each academic year you are expected to mark at least one community service activity and one teaching experience as most meaningful and complete the corresponding reflection prompts. Include "Service Learning Project" in the activity title to receive proper credit and mark as most meaningful to complete the reflection prompts.

Fill in the fields (those with a red asterisk are required) and click "Next."

This will take you to a page with more specific prompts to fill out.

Fill out relevant fields and answer the questions related to your activity. Note that service learning activity reflections will be assessed based on a rubric (see screenshot below.)

Once all relevant fields are filled in, click "Create Activity" to log the hour. 

NOTE: Submitting your activity hours only logs it in your history and does not submit it for approval. In order to do this, you must follow the directions below on How to Submit an Activity for Review and Approval.

How to view submitted activities/hours

Once you have submitted your hours, you may review your activities by navigating to the "Records" tab at the top of the page and clicking on "Activities." This will pull up a list of all submitted activities, including those pending for review, approved, or canceled. 

How to submit an activity for review and approval

Clicking on the title (red arrow in above screenshot) opens up the page on the individual activity. Once you open a specific activity that you have logged you can review, update, and submit for approval. You can review the information you entered by clicking on tabs to the left (green arrow in screenshot below), update the information you had already entered by clicking on the top right "Update Activity" button (blue arrow in screenshot below) or submit activity for review and approval by clicking on the "Submit Activity for Review" button (red arrow in screenshot below.) 

Note: Once you submit an activity for review, you can no longer update.

Once an activity is submitted for review, you can track the comment and approval history on the individual activity page.

How to track your service learning and teaching hour requirement

To see the number of service learning and teaching hours that you have submitted and have been approved for, navigate to your profile page and click on "Graduation Activities" in the left tab. A dashboard to track your service learning and teaching experience hours allows you to track the suggested hours (purple arrow below) to complete each year and the actual hours completed. Note that only hours that have been approved are added to the "Hours Completed" column.