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Abstract
Pace Universities' Asylum Project offers graduate students volunteer opportunities that aid in learning and professional growth. Given the volunteer nature of the Asylum Project, it is important to understand what motivates graduate students to volunteer their time when they are already juggling other program requirements. This project aims to examine graduate students' motivations to volunteer to do psychological evaluations for asylum seekers through the Asylum Project. This project also aims to look at the impact of conducting psychological evaluations for asylum seekers on student volunteers. Students' volunteering motivations and program outcomes will be assessed using the Asylum Project Program Evaluation Interview and Clary et al’s Volunteer Functions Inventory. Measuring the impact of the Asylum Project on Pace Universities graduate students will assist in improving students' training experiences by determining program needs. Clary et al.’s (1998) theory on the Functional Approach to volunteerism, which states the following six functions to volunteering: values, understanding, enhancement, career, social and protective, will be used to understand the motivations that prompted participants to volunteer for the Asylum Project. The data will be analyzed using grounded theory.