The spirit of Homecoming and 150 years of tradition will be combined with community service during the first Homecoming Day of Service, which begins at 9 a.m. Sunday in HUB Heritage Hall.

The Alumni Relations and Community Service Committee, chaired by Julie Noblick, is organizing the program.

Noblick, who came up with the idea of a Homecoming Day of Service, said she was inspired by past community service events.

"The inspiration was Fresh Start and MLK Day of Service," she said.

Noblick said the day would begin with volunteers listening to speakers in the Heritage Hall before they went to various projects.

"I think right now there are a little over 300 volunteers," Noblick said. "Including team leaders [which number] about one for every 10 [volunteers]."

Noblick said volunteer work would take place at off-campus locations as well as on campus.

She said volunteers would visit Centre County Paws Inc., Easter Seals and Shaver's Creek Environmental Center in addition to other volunteer organizations.

Noblick added there would be a Volunteer Information Fair in the morning, with organizations such as the American Red Cross and The Salvation Army giving information to students.

Tara Burnham, Overall Public Relations chair for homecoming, said the Volunteer Information Fair is designed to attract students who are interested in additional volunteer opportunities.

Participating organizations will earn 25 spirit points per volunteer. A maximum of 10 volunteers can earn spirit points for their organization, to earn at most 250 spirit points for one group. Spirit points go toward a competition of student organizations that ends in an awards ceremony Sunday of Homecoming weekend.

"I would say [spirit points] encourage participation because it's a new event and we appreciate the volunteers and want to reward them," Noblick said.

Andrea McDonald, Homecoming overall chair, said the scheduling of the Homecoming Day of Service was important because of its proximity to other university events.

"We wanted it to be a passing of the torch from the Sesquicentennial Games to Homecoming Week," she said.

Homecoming adviser Jared Brown said committee members from the Sesquicentennial Games partnered with Homecoming Committee to plan the day of service.

"It just made sense to tie in both and it was a great collaboration between [the] Homecoming and Sesquicentennial committees," said Brown, who is also director of fraternity and sorority life.

Noblick said more planning was necessary for the event than committee members originally anticipated, adding that the day of service might be bigger next year.

"There's so much planning that goes into this, I'm glad we had so much time to plan," she said.

Ryan Bennington, alumni relations and community service committee captain, said the project had been in the planning phase for several months.

"We started calling service sites last spring and summer," Bennington said.

Brown said the program was a great beginning to Homecoming festivities, which ends with the awards ceremony Oct. 24.