For Community Partners

Campus-community partnerships are a powerful tool for revitalizing communities and meeting persistent community needs. Mercer University offers multiple avenues for service to the community.

Before collaborating with Mercer faculty, staff, or students, it is important to understand the variety of partnerships available to your organization.

Volunteerism

Volunteers can be well suited for either one-time or ongoing project requests that a service-learning course or existing program cannot meet. Traditional volunteer requests include assistance with event setup or breakdown, agency-based tutoring, preparing meals, or gardening.

Service Learning

Service learning is an academic credit-bearing opportunity that connects classroom instruction with experiential service that both meets a community need and connects to the students’ course content. An example of this type of partnership includes students tutoring in Bibb County schools through the Read United program while enrolled in the INT 201: Building Community course.

Partnering with a service learning course is best suited for long-term projects that can be completed over a semester.

Community-based Research

It is also possible to work with faculty on a community-based research project. Community-based research allows students and faculty to meet a need of your organization while also fulfilling academic objectives through engaged research. At Mercer, this is called Research that Reaches Out and is part of the university’s Quality Enhancement Plan. Find out more here.

Internships

Internships may be paid or unpaid and are designed to provide students with work experience related to their major field of study. Click here to advertise available internships on Mercer’s Center for Career and Professional Development portal, Handshake.

Mercer welcomes volunteer requests from community partners who are seeking individual or group volunteers for one-time or ongoing projects. All volunteer requests are posted on the University’s engagement platform, BearPulse (powered by GivePulse). For information about how your organization can post on BearPulse, see the BearPulse page on this website.

Volunteer requests might broadly address ongoing needs such as tutoring or mentoring, serving meals to the hungry, or teaching English as a second language. Other requests might focus on one-time events, such as neighborhood cleanups, planting a garden, or planning an event for elderly residents of a nursing home.

Please consider the following when making a volunteer request:

The best time for your non-profit organization to submit a request is before the start of a given semester.
If students will require training from your organization, please make sure to note that in your BearPulse event description.
Volunteer requests should be submitted at least 2-3 weeks before the service event date(s).
Students will contact organizations directly so the organization can monitor how a specific need is met.
It is helpful to keep a list of responding students handy to contact directly in the future should needs arise.
Individual organizations, not Mercer University, are responsible for volunteer insurance.
Requests must be agency-based. Requests for individual needs in the home, such as caretakers, drivers, or private tutors will not be promoted.

To remain nonpartisan and in compliance with the University’s guidelines on Civic Engagement, requests for volunteers for political affiliations will not be announced.

Three-to-six weeks before an event (or events), determine the specific need, including dates, times, and number of volunteers required. Be sure to clearly define the responsibilities of the volunteer and determine a date by which you need a response.

Volunteer requests should be posted to BearPulse (powered by GivePulse), Mercer’s volunteer management platform. For help with BearPulse or more information on getting your organization connected, see the BearPulse page on this website.