Tracking student community service hours (STARS)
November 24, 2009 - 12:08pm
This post is about STARS, AASHE's Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System.
One of the most feasible methods that we have at the University of New Hampshire to measure student community service hours is through the Office of Greek Life, as all Fraternities and Sororities routinely submit records on community service hours and projects. The obvious problem is that this pertains only to students who are Greek.
Does anyone have any insights or recommendations on how to fully measure student community service hours?
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Hey Chris,
In addition to student engagement, student union, and student government, it may be worth checking with the Institutional Research, the Registrar, and/or Student Affairs departments to see if they are tracking any data or if they have suggestions for how to track the data. It may be that data have to be assembled from multiple sources (e.g., the registrar tracks service that's part of academic courses, the athletic department tracks its relevant data, etc.)
The STARS credit does allow for data gathered by survey or a representative sample. Using data from the Greek community only wouldn't be representative, but the institution doesn't have to track every single hour of community service in order to determine figures for this credit.
STARS intentionally used the same definitions and data that are used by the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll (http://www.learnandserve.gov/about/programs/higher_ed_honorroll.asp). When meeting with other potential data holders on campus, it would be worth asking if the institution participates in this program and, as a result, already has the data compiled.
Hope this helps,
The STARS Team