Wondering what kinds of experiences will count for this requirement? Just remember these basics:
- Fifty hours (or more)
- Relevant to your professional sector
Here are some actual examples that have been approved and used successfully by previous students. You can use these ideas for inspiration to create your own experiential learning, or you can contact these organizations and find out ways to get involved with them:
- Supporting faculty and new students and gaining valuable teaching and mentoring experience as a FIG Assistant (FA) with UO’s First-Year Experience Program.
- Speaking to classes and campus groups and creating other outreach projects as a Peace Corps Campus Ambassador.
- Working collaboratively with indigenous communities in Bolivia by planning and supporting projects and events with SIREJ (Students for Indigenous Rights and Environmental Justice).
- Learning ways to strengthen communities economically by researching how social programs impact participants’ ability to save and piloting a savings program for formerly unhoused persons, as an intern with MAPLE Microdevelopment.
- Working at labs on campus with faculty members to better understand global health, children’s well-being, and how young children learn.
- Creating a “tool library” for local organizations to use for support and recovery services serving both houseless and housed people with CascadiaClusters.
- Mentoring incoming student veterans as a PAVE (Peer Advisors for Veterans Education) advisor, to help them with their transition and to connect them to resources.
- Educating youth in Tanzania on sexual and reproductive health and managing social media for the local nonprofit Active Community Initiatives.
- Working as a swim instructor and life guard for children and youth with special needs at the Eugene YMCA.
- Learning about language teaching while honing professional-level language skills through a SLAT (Second Language Learning and Teaching) internship in a UO first-year Spanish class.
- Working as a teachers aid in a play-based San Francisco preschool.
- Learning about budgeting, marketing, outreach and fundraising by serving as Treasurer of the UO UNESCO Club.
- Serving as a professional role model and informal guidance counselor for kids by working for a summer at Boys and Girls Club of Emerald Valley.
- Teaching climate science and climate justice to middle school students through the Environmental Leadership Program on campus.
- Reviewing cases of children and youth in foster care, identifying needs, reporting findings, and making recommendations as a member of the Oregon Judicial Department Citizen Review Board.
- Promoting wellness and educating other UO students as a Peer Wellness Advocate at the Duck Nest.
- Teaching surfing to kids in a surfing and ocean education program in Los Angeles.
Tips:
- Can be a paid job, a volunteer experience, an internship or something you receive course credit for.
- Can be on-campus or off-campus, in Oregon or anywhere in the world.
- Can be part of a study abroad program, for example, the Global Health Service Learning program in Ghana, the Psychology internship program in London or the media program in Ghana.