Community Engagement and Service Minor

The community engagement and service minor emphasizes gaining skills to engage with communities. Students will learn about community contexts and priorities, communities' ongoing work to address their priorities, the broader societal challenges informing those priorities, and best practices for supporting and joining communities in this work. The minor culminates in a capstone course where students collaborate on real-world projects driven by community partners' priorities and needs. 

Through real-world, community-engaged experiences, students build professional capacities while developing a deeper understanding of meaningful community engagement. Ongoing reflection helps students connect their experiences to their academic, personal, and professional goals while strengthening their ability to collaborate with communities thoughtfully and effectively.

The Community Engagement and Service Pathways Minor is open to all Virginia Tech students and offers an opportunity to connect academic learning with meaningful community engagement and service. Through hands-on experiences, reflection, and collaboration, students can make a difference in communities while developing skills and perspectives that support their academic, personal, and professional goals—all while putting Virginia Tech’s Ut Prosim mission into action.

Students can complete the minor on its own or pursue it alongside the Honors Community Engagement and Service (HCES) diploma. The HCES option provides a pathway to participation in the Virginia Tech Honors College for students who meet the program’s academic requirements. Students interested in pursuing both begin with SPIA 1024: Community Service Learning and must meet the applicable GPA and completion requirements for the HCES diploma.

Whether pursuing the minor independently or pairing it with the HCES diploma, students can choose the pathway that best aligns with their goals and interests.