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Each new Student Liaison partakes in a three-part training which includes: (1) a safety training with Brian Hurd, JCU Police Chief, (2) a meeting with a CSSA staff member to review the Student Liaison manual and the logistics of the position, and (3) a site visit with a veteran Student Liaison to your service site prior to your first drive.

During your site visit, the veteran Student Liaison will teach you about facilitating reflection, building community in the van, and other important details about the position. Click here for additional training documents.

Click for advice from current Student Liaisons about leading reflection, building community in the van, and working with community partners.

To promote continued leadership development, Liaisons also attend mandatory monthly trainings that are coordinated and facilitated by the Student Leadership Team and CSSA staff.

There are six monthly trainings held each academic year. The trainings review the topics of leadership, safety, mission, reflection, mentoring, communication, self-care, diversity, job skills, and advocacy. The meetings are interactive and give Liaisons the opportunity to learn from the lived experience of one another.

Additional ideas of what you would like to see covered? Let us know!

Each Student Liaison is a part of a mentor group. Each mentor group is comprised of newer and veteran Student Liaisons who come together to discuss their experience, share advice, build community, and support one another. Group bonding activities, meetings around campus, and some friendly competition make these mentor groups quite a bit of fun.

Did you know you can earn your group bonus points by submitting a #MyServiceStory? We post these on social media and share one each week in our e-newsletter. Click here to complete the form!

Questions regarding information found here? Contact Maryellen Callanan or Sarah Narkin, or stop in to see us in AD-32 (Administration Building).

Student Liaison Resources

Resources on Safety

“When you get back in the van after service, our role as Liaisons is to initiate reflection. This may be challenging, especially if you have a quiet group.”
: Annmarie Kirchner ’17

“My biggest piece of advice for new Liaisons is to truly love service. Some students in your van might only be there because it’s a requirement, but if you let them know why you love being there, it can help them grow to enjoy their experience, too. This enthusiasm should extend from the conversations in the van into the service site itself, since you set the example for how they should act. Being a Liaison means that you’re a connector; you connect è������APP to the service site, but you’re also connecting the JCU students to service, sometimes for the first time. Therefore it’s important to be knowledgeable about the populations with whom you’ll be serving, the history of their community, and what social justice issues come into play. One of the most rewarding service experiences has been volunteering at Eliza Bryant Village and explaining the history of the Hough neighborhood to my van, which they brought up again and again in our reflections throughout the semester.”
: Robin Goist ‘18

“My advice is to pay attention to the way people interact with others during service so that you can try to relate the reflection quote to a specific moment that day. If nothing relates, don’t be afraid to reflect on what is relevant to your day at service! If someone had an eye opening conversation with a person at the site, elaborate on that and see if anyone else has insights on the topic. If the conversation begins to head in an inappropriate direction, don’t be afraid to interrupt and explain that it needs to stay respectful/appropriate. You’ll find that even though you all are at the same place, you’ll have different experiences and it is fun to learn from each other.”
: Annmarie Kirchner ‘17

“I think the hardest part of being a student liaison is the drive to and from. Besides the actual driving, engaging students can be difficult. Being a fun leader and one that actually gets students to reflect don’t have to be at odds with another. You just have to find the right ways to guide the students to talking about what they just did.”
: Tyler Jew ‘18

“Silence – I wish I would have known that students regardless of their grade, may not talk at first or at all. You may have a van that is very quiet, and that’s completely normal. But part of our job is to encourage students to share their experience aloud with the van in order to support their service experience and the experience of others because many students may feel the same way and a few students differently, which is great as well. Take any opportunity during service, especially during reflection, to learn from each other by discussing what happened, what we can do, and the bigger picture/larger injustice that concerns the site.”
: Zachary Thomas ‘18

“The skills you learn as a Liaison you may not even realize until you are out of school, but I promise you they are real….the leadership skills you are subconsciously learning from the monthly trainings and the actual experience will help you immensely in your everyday and professional life. It has taught me to be comfortable asking someone to do or not to do something, it has taught me to be comfortable in a leadership role, and abov