Are you at Maimonides Hospital looking for a Russian interpreter? Does your child in the Brooklyn Haitian Center after-school program need help with homework? The people coming to your aid, from translator to tutor, may be Brooklyn College SERVA volunteers. “It’s the Ephebic Oath in action,” comments Dr. Jacqueline Williams, referring to the pledge of civic responsibility recited at Commencement by freshly minted graduates.

       SERVA, initiated three years ago as a means of formalizing the College’s involvement in the community, is growing by word of mouth. Williams, SERVA founder and executive assistant to the dean for student life, reports a tremendous jump in activity after 9/11. In 2002–03, approximately twenty-five thousand hours of service were logged. “Brooklyn College students are active,” says Williams. And they reap riches.

      When students with a minimum 2.50 grade point average complete the required SERVA training and log one hundred hours of unpaid, not-for-credit volunteer activity at an approved campus or community organization, they receive a Student Life Honors transcript notation. “Not the cocurricular transcript,” Williams points out. “Brooklyn College believes that service to the community goes hand-in-hand with academic achievement.” In today’s job market and the graduate school scene, Student Life Honors can turn a promising candidate into a successful one. It may be better to give than to receive, but service, through SERVA or another channel, bestows such benefits on volunteers as skills, work experience, and job prospects, in addition to the personal satisfaction of being useful.