Volunteerism Is Associated with Improved Soft Skills of Marine Engineering Students in the Philippines

We assessed the impact on soft skills in among 60 marine engineering students after completing a 36-month long community service program. A Soft Skills-Graduate Attribute Scale was developed to measure the following outcomes, namely, professional competence, critical thinking skills, communication skills, lifelong learning, social and ethical responsibility, productivity, and interpersonal skills. Our results show that the students who participated regularly in volunteer activities possess significantly higher measures of graduate attributes relating to professional competence, communication skills, and social and ethical responsibility compared to non-regular and first-time volunteers. These specific soft skills were aligned with the expected outcomes based on the program design of the volunteer activities. Our study adds to the growing literature on the value of service-learning programs in higher education as community-oriented programs can potentially result in improving soft skills and cross-cultural competencies of students, especially in the technical fields.