Welcome to Service Learning at Belmont
Belmont University's Vision Statement
'To be a premier teaching university bringing together the
best of liberal arts and professional education in a Christian
community of
learning and
service'
Belmont's vision statement, puts service at the heart of a
Belmont education. Our campus sits at the intersection of several
culturally-diverse neighborhoods: 12th South, Hillsboro Village,
Edgehill, Waverly-Belmont. Our city is a home to refugees,
immigrants, disadvantaged families and schoolchildren. As we, as a
university, seek to be a meaningful community institution, we need
for our students to participate in that community. This
participation can ensure our students learn the needs, challenges,
and opportunities of working in settings with people from diverse
backgrounds. To help our students mature into people who can
'engage and transform the world with disciplined
intelligence, compassion, courage and faith,' we need to
give them the opportunity to take risks, to find out community
needs and current systems addressing those needs, and to explore
ways of improving community life.
Some of the projects Belmont students are involved in already:
- English and education majors tutor students at local schools
and gain valuable teaching experience
- Spanish students team up with community role models in the
Belmont/YMCA Hispanic Achievers program to empower Hispanic youth
through activities and mentoring specific to their career dreams
- Nursing students provide health fairs targeted to specific
populations. Recent projects focused on the health of adolescents
from a wide range of cultural backgrounds and on that of young
Sudanese men.
- Accounting students help neighborhood residents of all ages
improve their computer skills
- French students receive service learning credit towards a
French major or minor working with French-speaking Canadians in
the education department of Cheekwood Art Museum and Botanical
Gardens.
- Chemistry students facilitate a hands-on workshop for local girl scouts to inspire interest in the sciences.
