Students at the Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry on the San Francisco Campus spent more than 155,000 hours serving the community last year. Third-year dental student Katie Hagan ’24 estimates she spent up to 150 hours planning for events and volunteering, from teaching oral hygiene at elementary schools to providing health screenings for Special Olympics athletes to treating senior citizens at dental clinics.
“It puts everything into perspective,” Hagan said. “Sometimes you lose that in the day-to-day of making sure you’re meeting clinic requirements and the general standards to graduate, but doing events where you’re giving back to the community reminds me why I wanted to go into this career.”
McGeorge School of Law students, based on the Sacramento Campus, devoted nearly 64,000 hours to the law school’s clinics and helping the community through public service externships.
“It’s impossible to quantify the service to the community our law students have provided for over 50 years and continue to provide,” said Professor Melissa Brown, director of the Elder & Health Law Clinic. “Their clients place their trust, secrets and confidence with our students, who in turn provide ethical, competent and compassionate legal services.”
On the Stockton Campus, the Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy regularly holds Diabetes Care clinics, providing a crucial service where nearly 60% of the community has diabetes or pre-diabetes. The School of Health Sciences also saw a huge turnout earlier this year when the Pacific Hearing and Balance Center provided free hearing screenings with support from audiology students.