My project selection process begins a couple months prior to the start of the semester.
Specifically, although the first day of my Community Leadership class is not until
late January, I require the local non-profits who are interested in participating to submit
their project proposals by the first week of November. The timing of this deadline
coincides with when our students have completed their registration process for spring
courses. I email each student who has signed up for the Community Leadership class,
and I attach all the project proposals to my message. I ask them to rank order the projects
from 1 to N (total number of proposals) with 1 being their top choice for a project
and N being their least preferred project to work on. Over the eight Community
Leadership classes that I have taught, I have never placed a student on a project that
was below their third choice. The vast majority of students get one of their top two
choices. Students are going to work harder to successfully complete a project if they
feel strongly and positively about it. It is important that students have a passion for the
project because they are serving as a representative of the university, and you want the
local non-profit to experience a positive result. Those submitting proposals know that
there is no guarantee that their project will be selected. Most years there have been one
or two projects that did not score highly enough in these rankings to be selected.