Education Through Service At NYU

For many students the draw of service-learning courses is obvious. They apply their classroom learning in a real-world setting while serving vulnerable individuals. “Students are learning theory and concepts in the classroom, and then experiencing them in real time out in the field,” says Dr. Peggy Morton, director of NYU Silver’s undergraduate program.

Angela Ma is a 2024 graduate of the sociology program at the College of Arts and Science (CAS). She took two service-learning courses during her time at NYU. In Service Learning and Community Engagement, she tutored and mentored local middle schoolers. In Alzheimer’s Disease: Sharing the Lived Experience, she met weekly with an adult in the early stages of the disease. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to get involved with New York City and its communities,” she says. “You gain deeper firsthand and personal insights and learn things you can’t always learn from reading an article.”

Students often enroll in a service-learning course because they value community service. But for many the course enriches their lives or alters their path in ways they never could have imagined.

Omar Drissi is a Philosophy and Journalism major at CAS who took the Alzheimer’s service-learning course. There, he was paired with a patient who spent decades in the Greenwich Village art scene. “My mentor lived a fascinating life,” he reflects. “Spending time with him and the folks he surrounded himself with helped me consider writing as a profession. It informed my decision to declare a second major in Journalism.”

For Batool Abedrabbo, an NYU Abu Dhabi student majoring in Bioengineering on the premed track, the same course provided unexpected insights into how to approach patient care. “It allowed me to look at the bigger picture of the world of the disease,” she says. “It’s not just the patient being affected. It’s also their family and their caregivers. It was inspiring to realize the impact that diagnoses can have and, as physicians, what we can be doing in our interactions with these patients.”

While service-learning courses are undeniably beneficial to a student’s educational experience, it’s important to remember that service roles ultimately exist to support vulnerable populations. “It’s a reciprocal relationship,” affirms Dr. Morton. “Students get all this education about how to work with people, but at the same time, we’re providing a huge service in the community.”

Olivia Nilsson, a Social Work and Global Public Health double major, experienced this firsthand in the Alzheimer’s service-learning course. Although students are paired with patients in the early stages of the disease, symptoms can change daily and progress quickly. “My mentor never remembered me, and he didn’t know what we were doing,” she says. “It provided a good opportunity to reflect and think about a social worker’s role with that population. It taught me that you might not get the fulfillment of seeing how the work you’re doing is making a change, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not worthwhile or impactful.”

Service-learning courses are open to all NYU students. What’s more, due to the minimal time commitment, they are two credits each. This makes them a great addition to a semester for anyone interested in working with vulnerable populations or exploring a subject in greater depth. “So much of education is so theoretical and abstract to students,” says Dr. Morton. “Students in these courses gain a tremendous amount of experience that they wouldn’t get sitting in a classroom or reading a text.”

And though service work can have its challenges, Olivia stresses that it’s worth it. “It can be energizing and it can be draining, but the mission of helping people and serving underserved populations is always exciting,” she says.