The Office of Service Learning & Community Engagement is here to support you and your students! Below we detail some of the key funding supports we offer officially designated courses.
- Coffee & Conversation
To encourage the connections which enhance student retention (Song, et al,, 2018), The Office of Service Learning and Community Engagement (thanks to support from Sodexo and Academic Affairs) offers a Coffee & Conversation program for instructors and students of officially designated SL/CE courses to meet outside the classroom (for coffee OR lunch). Mentors for SL/CE without a course may apply as well, but may be asked to detail their mentoring work. - Course Support Funds
Each academic year, the Office of Service Learning and Community Engagement has a limited amount of funds to support Service related expenses in designated courses (supplies, printing, transportation, etc.). Funding for Service Learning courses may be approved up to $25/student and up to $10/student for Service Engagement courses. In recognition of economies of scale, large classes (over 20 students) should justify use of the full $25/student and small classes (under 20 students) are welcome to justify requests up to $500 per course. - Celebration of Service Awards
(for instructors AND students)
To recognize outstanding efforts by our members of our USC Upstate community, each spring the Office of Service Learning and Community Engagement, in cooperation with the Office of the Provost, offers several awards each year to students, faculty, and staff who demonstrate superior commitment to Service Learning and Community Engagement. - Liability Insurance
(Tab: What do I need to know about liability issues)
The Office of Service Learning procures Workers’ Compensation Insurance for all officially designated SL/CE courses through USC Columbia. This policy provides benefits for students involved in required, unpaid Service Learning experiences for officially designated SL/CE courses. - Reallocation Program
The SL/CE Course Reallocation Program is intended to simultaneously recognize, reward and foster instructors’ participation in SL/CE. For full-time faculty, this program will award up to $2,500 to the faculty member’s department to hire an adjunct instructor who will teach a non-SL/CE course that the faculty member would have been teaching. All full-time USC Upstate faculty members are eligible to apply for this program. - Student Travel Scholarships
To help make non-local Service accessible, each year the Office of Service-Learning, in cooperation with the office of the Provost, awards several travel grants to USC Upstate students traveling with an officially designated Service course. Awards will be contingent on both the quality of application and availability of funds; therefore, some applications may not be funded.