Columbia COVID-19 Student Service Corps: Harnessing student skills and galvanizing the power of service learning

Stephanie A Grilo; Marina Catallozzi; Urmi Desai; Aubrie Swan Sein; Cibel Quinteros Baumgart; George Timmins; David Edelman; Jonathan M Amiel

doi:10.1096/fba.2020-00105

Columbia COVID-19 Student Service Corps: Harnessing student skills and galvanizing the power of service learning

FASEB Bioadv. 2020 Dec 30;3(3):166-174. doi: 10.1096/fba.2020-00105. eCollection 2021 Mar.

Authors

Stephanie A Grilo¹, Marina Catallozzi^{1

2}, Urmi Desai³, Aubrie Swan Sein⁴, Cibel Quinteros Baumgart⁵, George Timmins⁶, David Edelman⁷, Jonathan M Amiel⁵

Affiliations

¹ Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health New York NY USA.
² Department of Pediatrics Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons Columbia University Medical Center New York NY USA.
³ Department of Family Medicine Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons Columbia University Medical Center New York NY USA.
⁴ Center for Education Research and Evaluation Columbia University Medical Center New York NY USA.
⁵ Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons New York NY USA.
⁶ Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health New York NY USA.
⁷ Primary Care/Social Internal Medicine Resident at Montefiore Health System New York NY USA.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic in New York City led to the forced rapid transformation of the medical school curriculum as well as increased critical needs to the health system. In response, a group of faculty and student leaders at CUIMC developed the COVID-19 Student Service Corps (Columbia CSSC). The CSSC is an interprofessional service-learning organization that galvanizes the skills and expertise of faculty and students from over 12 schools and programs in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and is agile enough to shift and respond to future public health and medical emergencies. Since March 2020, over 30 projects have been developed and implemented supporting needs identified by the health system, providers, faculty, staff, and students as well as the larger community. The development of the CSSC also provided critical virtual educational opportunities in the form of service learning for students who were unable to have any in-person instruction. The CSSC model has been shared nationally and nine additional chapters have started at academic institutions across the country.

Keywords: COVID‐19; medical education; service learning.