Every year for nine years, first-year orientation at Wheaton College ended with an urban plunge a day of service in the nearby town of Attleboro, Massachusetts. The urban plunge consistently outstripped all other orientation events in its success. However, there was a problem. Students left the day of service exhilarated, but without any concrete ways to connect this isolated experience to their academic and social lives at college. When a committee of faculty, students, and administrators got together last year to reconsider the freshman orientation, they decided to make service the centerpiece of the week. They proceeded to find ways to link the experience of service and community engagement into what they perceived as the three major elements of campus life: academic, social, and extracurricular.

The academic element began the summer before students arrived on campus. In the months preceding their first year, incoming Wheaton students are traditionally asked to complete an academic assignment. With the newly devised introduction to service, the students academic assignment was carefully selected. First, they would read The Call of Service, Robert Cole s Pulitzer Prize-winning book about youth and community service. Then, they would translate their understanding of Cole s ideas into a community engagement project. Students came up with a variety of ways to do this. One student assessed needs in Westborough, Massachusetts, and produced his findings in a photo documentary. Another student interviewed four community leaders to write a social science essay on community issues in Westwood. When the incoming class convened for orientation week, students presented to their peers the work that they had done in response to their reading on service.

Having introduced students to service through an intellectual and experiential exercise, the planning committee organized an event that would introduce new students to the ways that talking and thinking about service can build community. Upperclassmen transformed a house on campus into the Salon du Service, an intimate caf