Want to make an impact in your community and aren’t sure where to begin? Schedule a consultation with Community Engagement & Leadership (CEL)! Our consultations allow you to meet with a CEL staff member to explore the causes you care about most while learning about strategies or pathways for social change. CEL utilizes the Pathways of Public Service and Civic Engagement framework to categorize opportunities for student engagement. The Pathways framework includes six approaches to public service and civic engagement that all can be leveraged to contribute to creating more thriving, caring, and just communities. The pathways overlap and it is common for people to work in more than one pathway or move between pathways over time.


Step 1: Complete the Pathways of Public Service & Civic Engagement Diagnostic Tool (10 minutes)

The purpose of this survey is to provide you with an opportunity to explore social issues that are important to you and different ways of addressing these issues. Your results may serve to confirm what you already know about yourself and your interests. This tool will provide you with information about your public service preferences and interests while giving our staff the information that they need to connect you to local and regional opportunities that align with your interests. Your responses are anonymous!   

Please add your OSU email at the end of the tool.

Complete the Pathways Tool

Step 2: Schedule a Consultation Appointment (50 minutes)

This consultation is with one of our staff members. During the meeting, our staff will discuss your survey results with you and will connect you with community and campus partners.

Schedule a Consultation

The six pathways included in our programs and services are:

  1. Community Engaged Learning and Research: Connecting coursework and academic research to community-identified concerns to enrich knowledge and inform action on social issues.
  2. Community Organizing and Activism: Involving, educating, and mobilizing individual or collective action to influence or persuade others.
  3. Direct Service: Working to address the immediate needs of individuals or a community, often involving contact with the people or places being served.
  4. Philanthropy: Donating or using private funds or charitable contributions from individuals or institutions to contribute to the public good.
  5. Policy and Governance: Participating in political processes, policymaking, and public governance.
  6. Social Entrepreneurship and Corporate Social Responsibility: Using ethical business or private sector approaches to create or expand market-oriented responses to social or environmental problems.

*Adapted from Pathways of Public Service, in partnership with the Haas Center for Public Service, Stanford University.

Pathways of Public Service and Civic Engagement