In Dr. Gabriel Garcia’s ideal world, every student at Stanford would incorporate some sort of public service work into his University education.

It is with this goal in mind that Garcia assumed the position of faculty director of the Haas Center for Public Service in September, succeeding Prof. Len Ortolano. This year, he will lead the Haas Center in guiding students toward careers in the public service sector.

“The job was a good fit for me,” said Garcia, a professor of medicine and associate dean of admissions at the Medical School. “This is an amazing organization.”

His involvement at the Haas Center began in 1998 with his service on the Faculty Steering Committee. The experience prompted Garcia to develop his sophomore seminar, “The Human Side of Medicine,” into a service-learning course. He also served as faculty advisor for two Alternative Spring Break trips.

“Little by little, I espoused the idea that I could embrace experiential learning,” Garcia said. “The only way that one truly understands the way an individual experiences different health and disease states is through one-on-one interactions. You can’t read it in a book.”

The 2004 creation of Garcia’s position exemplifies this aim to connect students’ academic experiences with public service.

“The idea of having a faculty director is to embrace the dual responsibility of the Center: to engage students in public service and civic society and to align the mission of the Center with the mission of the University,” Garcia said. “The faculty director ensures that our programs serve the dual missions of the Center, and I take that very seriously.”

Suzanne Abel, director of external relations at the Haas Center, added that the Center benefits from the leadership of faculty members by allowing their different perspectives, academic expertise and networks to better inform the Center’s programs.

This year, Garcia hopes to forge a close relationship between the Haas Center and the Career Development Center to ensure that students have opportunities to pursue careers in public service.

“It’s a great challenge, but one we very much want to embrace,” he said.

The Haas Center recently surveyed 8,000 alumni involved in the Center during their time at Stanford. Of the 25 percent who returned the surveys, seven in 10 expressed interest in better connecting undergraduates to service.

“This is phenomenal,” said Nicole Taylor, managing director of the Center. “It opens the resources we have available for students.”

Garcia and his staff will focus on finding ways to take advantage of these alumni through advising and mentoring.

“We’ve really never had a formal alumni program, but having done this survey it’s really clear to us that they’re a tremendous asset,” Abel said. “Postgraduate priority has really come to the fore and alumni are major assets in terms of opening up doors for our graduating students.”

Engaging students in a lifelong commitment to service was central to Garcia’s vision.

“I want service to be an integral part of students’ education at all levels, so that it doesn’t end in graduate school or even with postgraduate students,” he said. “I want there to be a facilitated transition between the service that you do here and the service that you do with whatever career you choose. We believe that is a good outcome for a graduate.”

As for a possible mandatory service requirement for graduation, Garcia said that it was a curricular issue that would probably left to individual programs.

“We’re working with many programs this year who are very interested in establishing required courses in service-learning, and we will facilitate those,” he said. “It’s clear that that’s part of the mission of our school.”

Garcia said that additional conversations will assess the feasibility of making a service-learning requirement University-wide.

“I think that’s a discussion,” he said, “to be had with all the stakeholders.”