The Glenn Institute & Service  

The mission of The Hilda and Wilbur Glenn Institute for Philanthropy and Service Learning is to provide both excellent classroom education and hands on experiences that enable the entire Westminster family – students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni – to develop a sense of reciprocity and citizenship.

The goal is to encourage and inspire individuals to make genuinely meaningful contributions to society.

Vast contributions to society by insightful citizens are what stimulated the Glenn family to establish the Glenn Institute. 

This initiative is meant to elevate service learning and the duty of citizenship to the level of visibility enjoyed on this campus by academics, athletics, and fine arts.  Some students will captain an athletic team, others will be on the honor roll regularly, sing opera or paint, or maybe with our help, provide exceptional examples to the rest of us in community service or philanthropic initiatives.

Americans don’t pause very often to think of the fact that Yosemite National Park, the field of rocket science, the polio vaccine, the hospice movement, our public library system, even the original painting of the white lines on our nations highways were all provided to citizens of this country by people who saw it critical to give back to the nation and the world.  Through our work, we hope to be seeding in the student body these same instincts and motivations:  to engage students in communities and to create a sense of duty and obligation to improve society for all of us.

If Westminster students can go forward, infused with the spirit of what it means to "give back" and with what it means to exert leadership through service, and endowed with a genuine understanding of others who may be very different and with very different needs, we will have contributed to the education of those who will make a better world for all of God's children.

— Bill Clarkson, President