Education & Service Requirements - St. Norbert College

St. Norbert College bestows official recognition to a student organization with the intent that community responsibility in line with the college's mission must be a foundational part of the group's existence. Therefore, education and service program requirements are a stipulation of student organization recognition.

Education Program Requirement
All St. Norbert College Greek and Independent organizations are required to complete two educational programs per semester in order to maintain their recognition. Programs must address current campus interpersonal and societal issues. Examples include lecture, self-defense or similar programs.

If you need assistance in planning education program attendance, contact your LSI liaison for assistance.

Service Program Requirement
Guidelines for Recreation, Special Interest, Media/Programming, Cultural/Ethnic, Faith/Service and Governing groups
These groups complete at least one service project each semester. Their chosen project should fit within their mission and can serve the campus or local community. Below are three examples of group service projects:

Zen Club organizes free Yoga classes to help people to improve their health.
SGA organizes transportation to the voting sites to help get out the campus vote.
Viva Espanol organizes Fiesta Hispanica to celebrate Hispanic culture.

Guidelines for Social/Service Groups
Greek and Independent groups complete at least two service projects each semester. Each project must have 80% of the group members participating. At least one project each semester must be off-campus or benefit a non-profit agency. The goals for these service projects are not only to assist the community but to help each group to have a strong common service focus that builds their own community and creates a sense of purpose. (It is also great publicity!)

Partner with one or more non-profit organizations that you want to support and have your group identified with. Volunteer at least once each semester (as a large group or several smaller groups) to assist them with programs, fundraising and/or education. Do this on an annual basis so the organizations can count on you and your planning is easier. Below are three examples of student-community partnerships:

Untouchables work with the PALS program to help sponsor an annual Halloween Packer Party. In addition, they might help PALS with a spring roller-skating party or a fundraising event.
Delta Phi Epsilon partners with their national philanthropy, ANAD: the Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. They sponsored a bake sale to raise money and offered educational programs about anorexia.

Sometimes groups do a variety of different types of service projects each year. This is good, but not as helpful to a non-profit that can count on your group returning each year. Also, it takes a bit more planning if your service chair has to think of new projects each year.

There are a variety of SNC and student sponsored events that are ideal for groups and can count as on or off campus service:

Make A Difference Day (Oct) - LSI
Relay for Life (spring) – Counseling Center
Mother’s Against Drunk Driving Walk (spring) – No Nonsense
Blood Drives (2-3 times/year) – Health Center

For smaller groups:

8th Grade Mentor Day (Nov) – Women’s Center
Advent Candle Gift Wrapping (Dec) – Campus Ministry
Fall Fest (Sept) – Media Relations
100 Men Who Cook (Mar) - LSI

Keep in mind the goals of social group service projects are to provide a community building, service focused experience for the whole group (80%). So the following service projects, although they may be beneficial, do not “count”:

Collecting and donating money or items just from group members. But instead, try this: Host a campus wide food, clothing or items drive that involves the whole group collecting items from others.
Individual (or small group) volunteering; e.g., singing in church choir, tutoring, helping at an event at home, etc., even though 80% volunteered with something. But instead, try this: Plan a single project with many chances to volunteer; e.g., small groups of different people work at Paul’s Pantry at different times.
A service project with less than 80%. But instead, try this: For very large groups (over 100), if your group’s service project had at least 50% attendance, it can still count if you have a second service project which also achieves at least 50% attendance, (hopefully a different 50% than the first project).

For more information about how your student organization can make your service count, contact Nancy Mathias, Associate Director of Leadership & Service, at x4040.