Approximately 50 percent of San Jose City College students want to transfer to a four-year university. Completing some community service hours is one of the keys to get to their dream college.

“It’s better to have done community services when you transfer to a four-year university, especially to private universities or to UC like UC Berkeley or UCLA,” Doriann Tran, SJCC director of Career/Transfer center said. “It makes you stand out from other applications.”

San Jose Tech Museum is one place that students should check out.

More than 300 volunteers mainly from high-schoolers to seniors citizens run the museum. Most of the volunteers are college students from San Jose State University, San Francisco City College and San Francisco State University.

No science background is required to join the Tech Museum volunteers’ team.

Many job positions, such as weekday exhibit explainer, evening events volunteer, after-hour “Fun Ambassador” volunteer, hands-on science workshops volunteer, guest greeter and even marketing intern are available.

Each job has its own timetable, which enables students to choose their own shift. That’s an advantage of volunteering at the Tech, especially for college students whose schedules are normally hectic.

All soon-to-be volunteers just need to attend two orientations and two evening training sessions before they can gain hands-on experience at the Tech.

Steve Kastner, 25, was at Mission College when he first started volunteering at the Tech Museum.

“Being involved and communicating with younger kids builds a lot of patience, great communication skills … and builds work ethics, too like time management. That’s what college students need,” Kastner said. “There are always new exhibits here, special events and big time companies are coming in here like Intel, NASA, IBM … You build the contact, and they remember you.”

“When you volunteer, you start to create networks with someone who is in the field or may have connections with people who are in the field,” Tran said. “This can get you very far since nowadays,connection is very important.”

Senior manager of Volunteers and Training Talance Orme said the skills that students will gain will translate into the work environment, such as dealing with the public in meetings and interviews, being committed and showing up on time.

“If you take away tangible benefits and you talk about the intellectual parts of it, (The Tech) is an incredible place for someone who is pursuing a degree,” said Karen Hennessy, assistant volunteer coordinator.

The commitment for the Tech is about nine months to a year, but for the requirements of 40 hours of community service, the hours are all spread out so that students only need to volunteer one or two hours per week.

In an annual event for volunteers at the Tech in April, students have a chance to be recognized for their hard work at the museum.

“We treat our volunteers like family. We recognize their birthdays, we recognize their milestones,” Hennessy said. “We love our volunteers.”

To register online for volunteering at the Tech Museum, visit:

thetech.org/about-us/volunteer.For other volunteer opportunities, visit: volunteermatch.org or volunteerinfo.org.