service-learning | Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good

Design for Good: USF’s Food Pantry

In Fall 2024, Lizzy Fallon ’25 and Erika Baumgartner ’25, students in the Community Engaged Design class helped work on a large-scale campaign to rebrand and enhance the USF Food Pantry experience. Here is their story. We had the privilege of working first hand on designing with and for the USF Food Pantry. Our class…

Equity from the Classroom to the City

Fernanda (Ferni) Santillan-Sandoval ’25 will participate as a McCarthy Fellow in San Francisco this fall. Last summer she was one of the 2024 cohort of Equity Interns, a collaboration between the University of Delaware’s Biden Institute and YMCA of San Francisco to increase educational equity and learning opportunities for all students across the city. Ferni…

Learning Resilience from Community

Emily Choto ’25 is working toward both Environmental Science and Politics majors at USF! Being a McCarthy Fellow in San Francisco, she has been able to experience public service in the Mission District. Working inside The Food as Medicine Collaborative is a coalition of community clinics, food nonprofits and businesses, and health care systems. Emily…

Changing My Worldview Through the SFFD

Jaeda Johnson ’26 is a Psychology major with a minor in Criminal Justice Studies at USF. As a McCarthy Fellow in San Francisco interning at the SFFD’s Behavioral Health Unit, she has observed first-hand in San Francisco that while helping our communities, we must not forget to take care of ourselves. Read on to learn…

The Power of Mentorship

Sophia Troiani ’25 is one of our USF Rising Youth Mentors! Moving from Texas to California, she found her drive to give back and empower our communities. Pursuing her Psychology degree while minoring in Public Service and Community Engagement, Sophia has left a mark on our community by giving our mentees an insight into their…

See You in City Hall, McCarthy Fellows!

We are pleased to introduce 18 students who will participate in our McCarthy Fellows in San Francisco program in the Fall semester. Meet each fellow and learn where they will intern in City Hall or in nearby city offices and departments. In preparation, over this past summer, they participated in monthly training workshops in public…

The Vibrancy of Colombia

Recently, Community-Engaged Learning Manager at the McCarthy Center, Jackie Ramos travelled with students in the “Family Global Business Immersion in Cali, Colombia”. This course is part of the School of Management’s Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Strategy Department’s family business offerings. The class allowed students to integrate general family business theories with on-site coursework and immersion experience…

Student Companion to Community-Engaged Learning

I am thrilled to share the outcome of a collaborative project between myself and McCarthy Center Director, Dave Donahue, that has been years in the making! The Student Companion to Community-Engaged Learning: What You Need to Know for Transformative Learning and Real Social Change is a book designed for students to read in the first…