The University's mission is to provide an affordable and accessible education of high quality and to conduct programs of research and public service that advance knowledge and improve the lives of the people of the Commonwealth, the nation, and the world.  The Civic Engagement and Service-Learning office supports this mission in two ways.  By engaging students in a curriculum that includes significant public work, it prepares them for lives of active and engaged citizenship.  At the same time, it deploys the creative energy of these students and their faculty to address community needs in our region, our state, and beyond, thereby improving their own lives and the lives of the people with whom they work.

Service-learning has been practiced through individual courses on the UMass campus for many decades, and has been supported centrally by the Provost since the early 1990s.  The Civic Engagement and Service-Learning office was created in Fall, 2011, by merging two previous offices—the UMass campus-wide Community Service Learning office and the Community Engagement Program of Commonwealth Honors College—in order to better serve the entire campus.  We will be completing this transition for the next few months, and are excited to work with students, faculty and community organizations to support student learning and meet needs and goals identified by community members.