General Requirements - Office of Student Engagement

Service Renewal Criteria For Presidential, Governors, And Multicultural Leadership Scholarship Recipients

As a recipient of one of the above scholarships, you will be required to have completed 120 hours of service to the campus or community during your first three years in order to renew your scholarship for your senior year. This will be an excellent opportunity for you to enhance and add value to your experience at MSU in ways that will benefit you and others. It is also consistent with the University’s public affairs mission.

The service requirement is administered by the Office of Student Engagement (OSE) and you will maintain a record of your completion using Campus Link, a tool that is used to record your cocurricular activities and involvement. Early each fall semester, OSE will host orientation sessions for entering scholarship recipients to review the service requirement, guidelines, and benefits and to provide training on the use of Campus Link. You will be required to attend one of these sessions and will receive an email announcement with information on the available times and dates. You will also be able to review current guidelines and service opportunities at www.missouristate.edu/scholarshipservice. Additionally, during the spring of your junior year, you will be asked to submit a statement reflecting on the service you have provided and what impact it has had on you.

We strongly encourage you to begin fulfilling your service requirement your freshman year.

General Guidelines:

Service to the community must be done through approved organizations and verified by an appropriate agency official. (To check if an agency is approved e-mail volunteer@missouristate.edu)
Service needs to be submitted electronically online & paper verificiation submitted within one month of the completition of service
Up to 60 hours of credit (50% of the total) may be completed through on-campus service. Allowable on-campus service opportunities include service to the Center for Learning and Writing (Bear CLAW) or serving as a peer leader.
Whether a service is on-campus or off-campus is determined by who is the beneficiary of the service. For example, participation in blanket making on a residence hall floor will count as “off campus” because the beneficiary is the Linus Project, even though the activity itself occurs on the campus.
Component Service Learning courses and some Study Away courses (those that include a service component) will receive a block of hours that will count toward the requirement. The Office of Citizenship and Service Learning and the Study Away Programs Office can provide details on these opportunities and the amount of credit you will receive.
Service as an officer or member of a student organization is not applicable to this requirement; however, direct participation in a service-oriented activity or event sponsored by the organization is applicable.
You may wish to provide your service through faith-based organizations or institutions. Service that benefits non-members may be counted. Examples include mission work with a humanitarian focus (e.g., providing assistance to impoverished communities; tutoring children; building a school). Examples of service that would not count include conducting worship services, teaching classes, caring for children during services, or other activities that primarily benefit the organization and/or its members.
Examples of activities that are considered voluntary, not service, and therefore do not count include: political campaigning or fundraising, assisting your family or neighbors, or service for which you receive compensation.
Activities that raise money such as participating in a walk (Relay for Life, 5Ks) do not count as service, however helping out with those events (working the registration table, handing out food) would count as service.

For additional information, please contact:

Patrick Grayshaw
Assistant Director for Volunteer Programs
Office of Student Engagement
Plaster Student Union, Room 101
417-836-4386

What Counts as Service?

Please note that what counts as service varies between tracking mechanisms (scholarship hours, fraternity/sorority life, campus departments, etc)

Service is considered a voluntary act and should not be any paid position, with exception of AmeriCorps where you receive a "stipend" for your service
The recipient of the service should be the community either through a non-profit, or a community focused arm of a business of sorts.
Service needs to address a social issue. While it can be difficult to define a social issue, it needs to be working toward addressing a problem that exists in our community
Service does not include transportation time or additional training/preperation that was required for the service, however does include any on-site training of skills that are required to complete service. For example: being trained on the basics of digging a trench, using tools, and guidlines before building a walking trail would count while the time traveled, the preparation you did at home, and the internet surfing about walking trails would not count.
Service should not be done to benefit an organization in which you are part of or helping solely that organization. This includes student organizaitons, where planning to run an event does not count as service and religious groups where "bible studies" and "Vacation bible schools" do not count. Planning with the American Red Cross for a large blood drive would count as service if you are working directly with the red cross.
Service as a member of a student organizaiton does count as service. We encourage you to do service with friends!
Service as a member of a religious organization (such as a church or temple) would count when you are doing service with a humanitarian focus (such as providing assistance for impovershed communities, tutoring children, building a school, etc)
Philanthropy is not service, and cannot be tracked as service. Participating in philanthropy activities do not count as service, but helping with the event does count as service.
If you are part of a student organization and are holding an event, while the planning of the event does not count as service, helping run your own event does. If a particular task such as checking in other students is something you would ask for additional assistance for, participating yourself would count as service as well.

Think about the community when you are deciding if it is service. Direct Service - where you are directly interacting with the community members (working in a homeless shelter), Indirect Service - where you are doing something that helps the community but without direct interaction (packaging food), and Non-Direct service - where you are helping an agency that works directly with the community (data entry)