Log Your Service Hours

Eligible Service:

• Unpaid acts of volunteer service benefitting others
  • Service through National service programs that provide a stipend (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) may count towards the Lifetime Achievement Award, but not for the annual Bronze, Silver, and Gold Awards)
  • Travel stipends, transit/parking passes, membership passes, expense reimbursements, and other nominal volunteer support do not impact service eligibility

If you participate in a service-focused student organization, you may count any hours that are spent organizing and implementing a service project. If you are in an organization that uses meeting times to discuss other student organization operations or business, you may not count those hours. You should also not include hours spent on fundraising specifically for the organization, recruiting members for the organization. Only hours spent planning and participating in a service project will count, and will need to be able to be confirmed and verified by a faculty advisor (not a peer or student executive board member).

Eligible Service does not include:

• Donating funds
• Political lobbying (Non-partisan voter registration is an eligible activity)
• Religious instruction
• Conducting worship service
• Proselytizing
• Volunteer service performed as part of court-ordered community service
• Serving only family members
• Personal improvement activities such as conferences and trainings
• Service that directly benefits a for-profit organization
• Service that promotes specific political or religious views

Follow these steps to log your service hours:

1. Log on to UIC Connection using your netID and password.
2. Click the “My Activity” button located in the left menu bar, to see a drop down menu.
3. Select “My Service Hours”
4. Click “Add Service Hours” located near the top right of the screen
5. Enter “Service Hour Type”: click “Experience” if you are entering hours from an external UIC opportunity, and click “Event” if you are adding hours completed at a service opportunity event already listed in UIC Connection.
6. Select an Organization – If you selected “Event” in the previous question, it will populate with any event that you registered to via UIC Connections, you can select the event.  If you selected “Experience,” you can either select the student organization/department/Service Agency that hosted the experience (if an event was not posted on UIC Connection) or you can just type in the list of the Community Service Agency where you volunteered)
7. Time Commitment – Enter in the hours you volunteered and the date volunteered (currently this is not set up for recurring service hours done so you will have to enter in manually or contact SLCE@uic.edu to enter in as bulk hours if it done at the same place)
8. Attach Files – Upload any documentation confirming submissions for volunteer hours (screenshot of internal shift/hour system, email from supervisor, etc) AND what a description of the service you did. SLCE may still email contact person for verification.
9. Reference – Enter in the contact name and contact email who can verify that you completed the service hours
10. Tags – If you would like these hours to count as hours towards the Presidential Volunteer Service Award, please select this tag.  You can also select any other tags that you find applicable.

Logging Ongoing Service Opportunities

If you need to log in multiple ongoing service hours served, please email slce@uic.edu with the subject line “Approval needed for Ongoing Service Opportunities”. SLCE will not be able to approve multiple submissions of small hourly incriments when submitted all at once – we can only approve those submissions on a weekly or monthly basis. If you forgot to submit your ongoing service or prefer to submit at the conclusion of the month or semester of service, you should submit your hours all in one batch, with details about your ongoing service in the additional information sections of your submission. Please make sure to select your EARLIEST volunteer shift for the submission as the date of service (i.e., 4/7/21 for weekly shifts on Wednesdays for the month of April).

Students who log 100 or more hours during the calendar year are eligible to receive the President’s Volunteer Service Award and may be recognized in the following year’s Chancellor’s Student Service and Leadership Awards Ceremony. The calendar year starts on January 1 and ends on December 31 of the same year. To be both eligible for PVSA and also recognized in the CSSLA Ceremony (typically held mid-April), hours for the previous calendar year must be submitted no later than January 30 of the ceremony year (i.e., 2021 hours must be submitted by January 30, 2022 to be reviewed for PVSA eligibility and to be honored in the April 2022 CSSLA ceremony).

Hours that are submitted for volunteer roles held in past years may still be approved and processed, as they can be applied toward potential eligibility for the Lifetime President’s Volunteer Service Award (PVSA), but they can no longer be applied toward an annual PVSA.

For more information about the President’s Volunteer Service Award, please visit slce.uic.edu/service/president.