Painted on a colorful mural in the Haas Center for Public Service is a quote by John W. Gardner, the center’s founding board chair: “What we have before us are some breathtaking opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.”

Gardner, a distinguished statesman and educator who served in six U.S. administrations, including as secretary of health, education, and welfare under President Lyndon Johnson, believed that mentoring students through service builds the kind of leadership society needs. For over 40 years, the Haas Center has been helping Stanford students see “insoluble problems” as starting points for a lifetime of impact.

“Students come to Stanford wanting to have a positive impact and move the world forward. The Haas Center is a place for them to translate their values and ideas into action,” said Juliet Brodie, faculty director of the Haas Center since 2021. “Through the Haas Center, students don’t just ‘serve’; Haas programs provide students with skills and frameworks that can inform their approach to service for a lifetime.”

Growing a national movement

The Haas Center was founded in 1985 under the leadership of Stanford President Donald Kennedy. Kennedy believed deeply in the importance of public service, having served as Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under President Jimmy Carter.

+1

Courtesy Haas Center for Public Service

Kennedy appointed Catherine Milton, a pioneer in national service, to lead the effort to integrate public service into the student experience at Stanford. Under Milton’s guidance, a campus hub for volunteering and service learning took shape.

Kennedy also co-founded Campus Compact with the presidents of Brown and Georgetown in 1985 to promote public service across higher education, sowing the seeds of what would become a national movement for service. Today, Campus Compact is the nation’s largest and longest-standing higher education association dedicated to civic and community engagement.

“When Donald Kennedy advanced what we now call experiential education – public service organized through university service centers – it was a game changer,” Brodie said. Much of what we now take for granted as part of the modern college experience began with Kennedy 40 years ago.”

In 1989, the Public Service Center was renamed in honor of the Haas family of San Francisco. What began in a one-room office at Owen House has become a thriving community located in a three-story residential-style building at 562 Salvatierra Walk.

Integrating academics with service

Each year, the Haas Center connects more than 3,500 students with service opportunities. Part of the center’s success is due to its integration with all aspects of the Stanford experience through Cardinal Service, which was launched in 2015 to expand its offering across campus.

Today, Haas partners with all seven schools and more than 50 units across campus.

Students can choose from more than 170 academic courses that address real-world projects, tutor or mentor local youth, take an Alternative Spring Break service trip, assist on a community-based research project, or participate in one of the many student-led events held at the center each week. The Cardinal Quarter program connects students to fully-funded summer fellowships and internships in government agencies, nonprofits, and community organizations around the world. A range of fellowships helps ensure all interested students can participate.

Related story

Student-led program redefines spring break with a focus on volunteer service

For nearly four decades, Stanford undergraduates have organized service-oriented trips to study issues impacting communities across the U.S. This year, they dispersed across the country to learn about immigration challenges, educational inequality, climate change, and more.

Because Stanford offers such a wide spectrum of programs, every student can see themselves in service, said Megan Swezey Fogarty, ’86, who served as the center’s deputy executive director from 2013-2020.

“Embedding impact into courses was one of the ways to reach students who might not otherwise seek out service opportunities,” Swezey Fogarty explained. For example, an engineering student might choose a course where they design assistive technologies, or a biology major may find themselves taking a course that involves working in a community garden to improve soil health.

Many paths to service

At the Haas Center, public service and community-engaged learning aren’t confined to specific majors or career paths – they’re approaches that can prepare students from every field to become engaged citizens and leaders, said Yi-Ching Ong, the Haas Center’s executive director.

“We encourage students to think broadly and capaciously about how to connect knowledge from all kinds of different domains, including the community,” she said. “Our programs enable all interested Stanford students to connect their academic growth with meaningful social impact.”

Karsen Wahal, ’25, a coterm in computer science with a double-major in economics and math, has found multiple opportunities through the Haas Center to pursue his interest in driving change through work in policy and technology.

He interned at Propel, a public interest technology startup that helps low-income families access government benefits. He also worked directly in government, including at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and the U.S. Senate, experiences that showed him firsthand what policymaking looks like. “Anyone can turn their interests into impact and public service,” he said. 

Defining principled and ethical service

Since its founding, the Haas Center has strived to provide meaningful learning experiences that both reflect and respect the communities it serves. The center’s Principles of Ethical and Effective Service were introduced in 2002 to ensure that service and impact are conducted and evaluated responsibly.

The guidelines lead students through reflection on principles such as respect, safety, and well-being, and accountability. While working with End Poverty in California, Wahal said he frequently drew on the principle of humility, which requires deep listening.

As a result, he discovered there was no single lens through which to view economic inequality. “When we discuss poverty in California, we often think in broad strokes,” Wahal said. “However, there are significant differences in how people experience poverty.”

For Wahal, the experience underscored the importance of solutions that are informed by those directly affected.

Turning students into changemakers and leaders

Public service invites students to envision how they will use their education to make a meaningful difference in the world. Out of this process, leadership qualities emerge.

“When they realize they are not just passive recipients of information in a classroom, but active agents transforming knowledge into action through their own values and commitments, students begin to see themselves in the world and in leadership,” Brodie said. In one example, graduate students in the Design for Extreme Affordability course partnered with a San Jose nonprofit to create a hands-on gardening kit that teaches children about sustainability and food sovereignty, applying human-centered design learned in the classroom to an educational tool used in the real world.

The Haas Center was founded with the hope that students will see public service as a lifelong commitment, an aspiration that reflects a deeper Stanford ethos as articulated by the university founders to prepare students “for personal success and direct usefulness in life” – and, even more, “to promote the public welfare,” as stated in the university’s founding grant.

“Jane Stanford talked about ‘germinating the soul’ at Stanford,” Fogarty reflected. “When the value of public service is built into a student’s DNA, it becomes part of their scholarship and research. It shapes their thinking, and eventually, who they become after they graduate.”