How service-learning helped one FGCU graduate launch her career
- Laurie Dionne Babcock
- Alumni
- Contributors: Rob Salazar, Video
6 – minute read
For Sophia Amvrosiatos (’21, communication), a boat ride — and Florida Gulf Coast University’s commitment to service-learning — changed her life.
While completing service-learning hours at the Freedom Waters Foundation, Amvrosiatos found support during one of the most difficult periods of her life, discovered a passion for nonprofit work and began building relationships that would shape her future.
Two years later, those connections led to an unexpected phone call and a job offer from the very organization where she once volunteered, showing how FGCU’s commitment to service-learning creates opportunities that extend far beyond graduation.
A personal connection to service-learning
Amvrosiatos grew up in a small town in upstate New York and moved to Florida to attend FGCU. She had never been on a boat before connecting with the Freedom Waters Foundation in Naples. The organization provides therapeutic boating programs for children and adults with disabilities, at-risk youth and veterans.
“I was a college student, taking care of my mom who was battling cancer, and I was able to go on a boat trip with a child who had cancer,” she says. “For me, it was life changing to experience some other caregiver going through a similar situation that I was. She was taking care of her 5-year-old daughter, and I was taking care of my mother who was going through it.”
Her personal revelation wasn’t the only benefit she got from the experience. Amvrosiatos picked up new skills related to her communication studies.
“Talking to strangers was one of the biggest things for me,” she says. “You’re showing up for a boat ride with a captain that you have never met before, a family that you haven’t met before, but you’re there for three hours on the water with nothing else to do but talk, take photos and videos and have some lunch. So for me, it was opening up and having certain conversations — and just that openness in general was a strength to me.”
With her communication concentration in public relations, and minors in marketing and interdisciplinary studies, Amvrosiatos found ample opportunities to work with nonprofits like the Freedom Waters Foundation.
“I always had that passion to be helping others.”
And she did just that, on and off campus. Amvrosiatos served as a teaching assistant for two courses and as an Emerging Eagles mentor in the Multicultural & Leadership Development Center (now The Leadership Experience). She volunteered at the FGCU Food Forest and Bonita Springs’ Wonder Gardens. In recognition of her cumulative service work, she won FGCU’s Excellence in Civic Engagement Award in 2021.
Making an effort to cultivate connections
Her time with the Freedom Waters Foundation in particular led to building relationships with vessel owners, captains, donors and individuals they helped. “Not only were we impacting the lives of that family, but as a volunteer, I was being impacted,” she says. “I was, like, ‘wow, I would love to work here someday.’ And that was when I was 21 years old.”
During her service and in the years that followed, Amvrosiatos formed a professional and personal bond with the foundation’s founder, Debra Frenkel, that she cultivated purposefully.
“Building that relationship really made such an impact to me. And I think that that’s not something that you could teach, but something that you just feel,” she said. “Having strong connections, really networking, makes such a difference. You never know where it can land you. Even two years after graduating college, I had this relationship with Debbie.”
In 2023, Amvrosiatos’ mother lost her battle with cancer. A few months later, she says, “I got a call from an old friend.” It was Frenkel, offering her a position as program director at Freedom Waters Foundation — Amvrosiatos’ dream job, which she still holds today.
“It was just a great opportunity to start my career in something that I really love and care for.”
Being intentional with service-learning
Students have given more than 5.5 million hours to the community since FGCU opened its doors in 1997.
Service-learning is so vital to the FGCU experience that the university doesn’t stop at simply including engagement in its mission and vision statements. It’s one of the only public institutions in the country to make service a graduation requirement, according to Justin Fitzgerald, director of Service-Learning & Civic Engagement.
“The No. 1 thing that employers are looking for and grad schools are looking for is experience,” he says, and FGCU’s service-learning requirement provides an opportunity for students to gain that in the real world.
FGCU has more than 600 active partners in the service-learning community partner database.
“These are only the nonprofits and government agencies that chose to register and post specific opportunities. However, students can — and do — serve with any nonprofit or government agency in the world,” Fitzgerald says. “FGCU has always deeply believed in community engagement. We know it’s valuable to the students and valuable to the community. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.”
FGCU has service-learning and community-based research initiatives embedded in more than 300 classes, earning FGCU recognition by the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. FGCU’s achievement of the 2026 Carnegie Community Engagement Classification reflects its longstanding and continually growing connections to the five-county region it serves.
“Any major that a student has here, we can find a nonprofit or a government agency who has a need that connects to that,” Fitzgerald says.
Amvrosiatos encourages current students to be purposeful with their service-learning and their own talents.
“Staying intentional with the relationships that you’re making, the networking that you’re doing and, of course, showing up for you and showing up for them is so important,” she says. “My service-learning provided me with an experience to take me out of my comfort zone, build relationships and network, and led me to a career that I love.”