Volunteer hours are an important part of high school and a key aspect of the college admissions process. The ideology behind Tampa Prep is, “for students to volunteer because they want to volunteer for a cause or organization that they really cared about,” the registrar and assistant to college counselling Jody Rodriguez said.

Key Club is a student led group that provides opportunities to volunteer. Senior Jack Forsyth has about 250 service hours. As the Former Vice President of Key Club, he “planned service opportunities and assisted the president in whatever they needed,” Forsyth said.  

Key Club is a great way to get involved inside of the Terrapin community and get hours for good causes, they have partnerships with St. Peter Claver, Graham Elementary, Teen Court and Students for Seniors.

Regarding what students can do to stay in the loop for opportunities, “People should subscribe to newsletters that update them on different events that might be going on in Tampa,” Forsyth said.

Tampa Prep used to have students use Naviance for keeping track of volunteer hours but, “Naviance wasn’t performing how we wanted it to, and we didn’t like some of the functions and their customer service wasn’t as good as we hoped it would be. It became outdated,” said Rodriguez.  

Students in the past have also used X2vol to record volunteering, so if you have already entered hours, “We have all of the data that was entered in X2vol, so for students who need to know exactly what they entered, they can come see me or send me an email,” said Rodriguez.

Nowadays, students are being introduced to SCOIR to keep track of things for college. “SCOIR is a more comprehensive tool that will give student and college counselors a complete picture of the student’s involvement (not just service related.) And, students can keep their SCOIR account beyond high school,” said Rodriguez.

Tampa Prep is trying to give students all the resources to be organized and successful in the college process with SCOIR.  The current staff is currently working on a calendar to hopefully make it more convenient for students to get more involved and organized.