Sophomores Serve
Sophomores Serve combines academic learning with personal learning and community service.
Sophomores Serve is a one-year, academic, civic education program for Honors College sophomores. Working in collaboration with community organizations, students gain a deeper understanding of community needs and assets, and of their own role in creating a more just world.
By combining academic and experiential learning, students develop a deeper understanding of the specific needs, systemic inequalities, and structural violence addressed by our community members and partner organizations. Students work with groups on campus and throughout Western Massachusetts to engage in meaningful, direct service. In addition to direct service, during the second semester, students may choose to engage in issue research, policy research, or advocacy. To deepen the relationship with the course material, this course will include guest lecturers from the community and field site visits. Students of all political stripes are welcome in this course.
Sophomores Serve Requirements
You will take HONORS 260H: Civic Engagement and the Public, a 4-credit Honors General Education course in the fall semester and a 1-credit HONORS 391AH: Honors Discovery Seminar and a 3-credit HONORS 396ISH: Independent Study in the spring semester. You’ll work with your community partner(s) approximately 3 hours/week for a total of at least 60 hours over the course of the academic year.
HONORS 260H fulfills the Social and Behavioral Science (SB) and U.S. Diversity (DU) General Education requirements. HONORS 391AH fulfills the Honors Discovery Seminar requirement and HONORS 396ISH fulfills an any level or 300+ level honors requirement. These courses are also designated Service Learning (SL) courses and counts toward the requirements for a UMass interdisciplinary Certificate in Civic Engagement & Public Service (CEPS).
The Honors College suggests students discuss the courses with a CHC advisor to best plan for the added workload.
Community Engagement
You will work with your community partner for at least 60 hours over the course of the academic year. Typically, this means 3-4 hours/week, though some placements require more hours/week over fewer weeks.
Our likely partners for 2025-2026 include the following organizations. You may also petition to work outside these choices, especially if you have an established relationship with another organization.
- The Literacy Project,
- The UMass Partnership for Worker Education,
- The Garden: A Center for Grieving Teens and Children,
- Afghan Refugee Support
- The Nelson Homestead (simple living, war-resistance, Gandhian nonviolence)
- Amherst Neighbors/Amherst Senior Center
- One of two conversation tutoring/partner organizations:
- The Center for New Americans
- The Jones Library English Conversation Partners
- One of three shelters/soup kitchens,
- Not Bread Alone (Amherst),
- Stone Soup Café (Greenfield), and
- Craig’s Doors (Amherst)
Most of the work will be in person, but some tutoring is remote/online.
These organizations may have opportunities for:
- English, Spanish, and computer tutoring
- Homeless shelter and soup kitchen support
- Arts outreach with UMass staff and frontline workers
- English and math tutoring, and teaching assistantships, in classes with UMass staff and frontline workers
- Storytelling, conversation, workshop-design, tech tutoring and more for seniors
- Helping run support workshops for grieving children and teens
- Archival research, documentary-making, and/or physical labor support for the Nelson Homestead
Course Details
Sophomores Serve courses are led by Nicole Nemec, Senior Lecturer in Commonwealth Honors College. You will enroll in the following course sequence:
Fall 2025 - HONORS 260H, Civic Engagement and the Public (4 credits), Friday/1:25 - 3:45 p.m.
This course will explore the meaning and practice of building relationships and community as foundations for addressing inequities and for creating social change. Telling stories, listening to others’ stories (though they may tell a different truth than your own), and coming to a deeper understanding of the full array of human resources available within a community, are all essential to building and maintaining communities and to creating a more just world.
We’ll look at how individuals create communities (and are created by them), and how we navigate the interwoven groups and identities that make up our communities. You will be introduced to several models of social structure and social change. You will also be introduced to the practice and theory of critical service-learning, including consideration of what constitutes ethical and effective community service in a society stratified by race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and ability.
Through your community work, you will learn from and about the individuals with whom you work. At the same time, you will learn about your community partner organization and its missions and roles, including not only the problems they address but also the assets they build upon. An important goal is to translate thought into action through meaningful community work; this may include direct service as well as projects that engage policy, action research, or advocacy. We will have at least one group site visit per semester, as well as guest lecturers on topics that may include: homelessness and housing; labor’s intersection with race and class; adult literacy; war resistance; and conditions for veterans.
Throughout the course, we’ll be investigating the nature of civic engagement, i.e. our role as human beings in relationship to one another: What does it mean to be a part of a community? What does “doing good” as an individual have to do with complex social problems and systemic injustice? What are some of the specific ways inequity is created and maintained, and whom does it affect? Where does social change to address inequity come from? Is “service” about addressing inequity alone, or is it part of a broader notion of being in community? What happens when community work is brought into the labor market, when it is commodified or professionalized? What is the relationship between service, charity, and justice?
In addition to studying academic texts, you’ll be asked to think metacognitively and reflect on your own learning and the multiple contexts in which it can take place. We will discuss different approaches to knowledge – e.g., what kinds of knowledge or learning are valuable or discounted in different contexts? With this group of peers for support and feedback, we want to learn to draw more from our experience in civic engagement than we would on our own.
Spring 2026 - HONORS 391AH + HONORS 396ISH, Sophomores Serve Seminar + Independent Study (4 credits), Friday/1:25 - 3:45 p.m.
This course is the second of two courses in the Sophomores-Serve program and investigates the larger contexts and interconnectedness of individual service placements. Continued work with your community partner will help you develop deeper relationships, as well as a richer understanding of the specific needs, systemic inequalities, and structural violence affecting those with whom you are working. A component of this course is doing independent research on issues of personal student interest – or contributing to meaningful projects developed in concert with your community partner, where possible. These projects range widely depending on the needs of each organization and may include archival research and documentary-making, event-planning, research in support of grant applications, and facilitation of reciprocal access to community and university resources, among others. The research and/or projects should contribute to your individual or organizational capacity to work for change. Students reflect upon the service-learning experience, summarize lessons learned to share with the incoming group of Sophomores-Serve students, and consider building upon their research and service placement to create a presentation for the Undergraduate Research Conference or begin an Honors Thesis.
Eligibility
Sophomores Serve is offered to current first-year Honors College students and is a great match for students of any major interested in civic engagement.
Application
Students interested in the Sophomores Serve Program for the 2025/2026 academic year can apply using the online application.
The application deadline for the 2025/2026 academic year is Monday, February 3, 2025, at 5:00 p.m.