Skip to main content
COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

SERVICE LEARNING

A student talks with a gentleman during a service project.

Service Learning connects the classroom with the community, enabling students to apply knowledge to real world issues and become local and global citizens striving for the common good. 

Students integrate theoretical knowledge from the classroom with hands-on experiential learning in underserved communities. Through course content, readings, class discussions, written assignments, and a service placement, students will become critically aware of the social narratives, policies and practices that hurt or harm the people we serve. Students use that critical and constructive thinking to assist with real world solutions that promote the common good.

WHY SERVICE LEARNING?

Service Learning is hands-on work in the community that allows students to continually reflect and act toward making change, all while empowering self-directed lifelong learning.

Service Learning requires students to engage on a deeper, more significant level where they can reflect on their moral and ethical responses and then use that knowledge to help make a difference.

Service Learning in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences directly connects with the University mission. provides experiential opportunities in the community, where students will find a common humanity through the work they do while growing spiritually through a new understanding of Catholic Social Teaching.

Office of Service Learning
St. Augustine Center for the Liberal Arts
Villanova University
800 Lancaster Avenue
Villanova, PA 19085

Mark Doorley, PhD, Interim Director

Mary Aiello, Administrative Assistant
SAC Room 385
(610) 519-4602

SERVICE LEARNING BENEFITS

Research proves service-learning improves students' personal efficacy, learning outcomes, commitment to service, moral development, leadership and communications. 

WHO WE ARE

INTIMATE AND INTENTIONAL EDUCATION

"Service Learning allowed me to develop relationships with people of backgrounds different from my own, and I learned more about the world in this intimate and intentional way. I found my best friends through the Service Learning Community, and I can’t imagine my Villanova experience without it," says A. Song '19 CLAS.

EYE-OPENING EXPERIENCES

“As corny as it may sound, the children of ACLAMO have taught me more than I could ever teach them and really helped open my eyes to the multitude of injustices they face on a regular basis, igniting my passion to really start to look at what I was blind to for so long,” says Kaitlyn Irwin ’18 CLAS

CAREER PREPARATION

“Without SLC, my understanding of medicine would have been unrealistic and naive. Instead, I received a real, genuine experience that prepared me to get into medical school and for a challenging profession where I will care for patients with a robust and realistic understanding of the world that shapes and affects them,” says Sara Vaughn ’20 CLAS, who was a Sophomore Service Learning Community student leader.

FINDING PURPOSE

“From the experiences I had and the people I met throughout my time as a member of SSLC, I found myself, my purpose, and connected with some of the most inspirational and kind-hearted people I have ever met,” says Crystal Brau '21 CLAS.