Eager to volunteer, hundreds of students and others from the Tulane community line up for their assignments at last year's Outreach service day. (Photo by Rick Olivier)

Tulane University alumni, faculty, staff and more than 1,000 students will hit the streets of New Orleans on Saturday (Sept. 1) to volunteer as part of "Outreach Tulane," a variety of day-long projects in various city neighborhoods.

The Tulane Center for Public Service has coordinated projects with more than 20 community groups, including the Louisiana SPCA, Habitat for Humanity, Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadian, Project Lazarus, City Park, Communities in Schools, the Green Project, Malta Park Assisted Living Facility, Beacon of Hope Resource Center, and others.

Volunteers will gather on Newcomb Quad of the uptown campus at 8 a.m. on Saturday and will be bused to their service agencies around the city.

"This is the largest single day of community service for our students, faculty and staff," says Vincent Ilustre, director of the Center for Public Service.

Activities will include painting public schools, general cleaning and yard work, cutting fabric squares to make beds for animals, socializing with elderly residents, sorting and packaging food and other donations, building a Habitat home, and picking up trash and debris.

Public service is now a requirement of the undergraduate core curriculum -- an element of the Tulane Renewal Plan unveiled after Hurricane Katrina.

To fulfill the graduation requirement, each student must complete one service-learning course at the 100- to 300-level before earning 70 credit hours, then participate in one higher-level academic activity in the 300- to 600-level before graduation. For the second requirement, students can choose from a menu of academic activities: a service-learning course, internship, research project, honors thesis project, service-based international study-abroad program or capstone experience with a public-service component.