About the Buckley Public Service Scholars Program
The Buckley Public Service Scholars Program (BPSS) at the Carolina Center for Public Service (CCPS) provides a framework for Carolina undergraduate students committed to making a positive impact through service. BPSS challenges participants to expand their understanding of service, connect academic and community-based experiences and build their capacity to help effect change. While completing the program components, participants build portfolios reflecting their learning and unique experiences throughout North Carolina, the nation, and the world.
Launched in 2003, BPSS has connected students with similar interests and provided special opportunities for leadership development and community engagement. Since the program’s inception, more than 8,000 students have participated, contributing 2.3 million hours of service. Currently, about 10 percent of Carolina undergraduates are enrolled as participants.
In order to graduate with BPSS, undergraduate students enrolled in the program must complete at least four approved skills trainings, each connected to at least one of the following topics:
- Advocacy and community organizing
- Diversity and cultural awareness
- Effective communication
- Ethics and leadership
- Evaluation and applied research
- Financial management
- Fundraising, grant writing, and philanthropy
- Planning and assessment
- Service-specific training (e.g. rape crisis counseling or ESL instruction)
- Social entrepreneurship and innovation
About the position
This year, the Carolina Center for Public Service will offer support for six Carolina graduate students to serve as skills training facilitators for undergraduate students engaged in service in the community and on campus. Selected graduate students are required to facilitate the same standardized skills training ten times (five per semester) for BPSS participants as well as help with the review process of BPSS portfolios submitted by graduating seniors.
Selected graduate students will facilitate standardized skills trainings on the topics of cultural humility, effective communication, and ethics and leadership. (Skills trainings will be offered remotely until further notice.) This could look like facilitating the standardized cultural humility training five times during the Fall semester and facilitating the standardized effective communication skills training five times during the Spring semester. Undergraduates also attend skills trainings that are offered by other groups. Events where students simply learn information or gain awareness (such as through a lecture, panel, or presentation) do not apply.
In addition to facilitating skills trainings, BPSS graduate assistants will be asked to serve on a panel for students on graduate school and public service and also respond to their senior reflection submissions, offering them feedback on their attempt to synthesize and make meaning of their public service experiences while they were enrolled in the program. For completing these requirements, each graduate student receives a stipent of $1,600.
To apply
Interested students should complete the online application no later than August 19, 2020. Contact bpss@unc.edu with any questions.