Distributing condoms, planning sexual education events and providing alcohol and drug counseling -- all in a day's work for a University Health Services (UHS) student volunteer.

UHS has about 257 student volunteers, Susan Kennedy, associate director for educational services, said. The majority, 162, work in health promotion and education.

To celebrate this year's National Health Week, UHS will be running advertisements featuring their student volunteers and putting up posters to publicize their efforts.

"Within health promotion and education, we have students that do health advocacy, peer education and outreach and mentoring. They also are involved in programming safer sex parties for men and women and distributing condoms," Kennedy said.

Linda Ustaris (junior-nutrition) is a Healthworks volunteer and also volunteers eight hours per week as a clinical volunteer.

She spends her volunteer hours doing "intakes" -- taking vital signs and patient other information and working in women's health.

"On Thursdays, I 'chaperone' one of the male gynecologists. Because he's a male ... he likes to have a female person in the room," she said.

Ustaris said she tries to help out the patients whenever possible.

"Sometimes if a patient is uncomfortable, I'll try to make them feel more comfortable," she said

One time, Ustaris said, she sat in on a coloscopy -- a procedure used to diagnose cervical abnormalities that may lead to cancer.

"The patient was really nervous, so I just kept talking to her and trying to take her mind off things. She told me afterwards that it really helped her," she said. Student volunteers are an important part of UHS, Ustaris said. "I think it's good to have someone students can relate to, not just clinicians," she said.

Katie Koehler (senior-biobehavioral health) volunteers on the HIV/AIDS Risk Reduction Advisory Council. "I volunteer every other Wednesday at Access to Protection in the HUB, where I give out free condoms," she said. "Working in sex education at UHS, you forget people don't really talk about sex much. It's not a big deal for me to see condoms or hand them out, but I get a lot of responses."

Once a group came in from a Christian college and started heckling the volunteers about handing out condoms, Koehler said. "They wanted to provoke something, but we were very professional," she said.

Other responses are just as unwelcome. "People will try to tell me things like 'I don't have sex', which is too much information, or people are really shy about taking [the condoms]," Koehler said.

Still, Koehler said working with students is her favorite part of being a volunteer. "I really like interacting with Penn State students and putting on events they don't normally see, like the condom roses for Valentine's Day," she said.

Joy Powell (senior-biobehavioral health), a Healthworks volunteer, plans and coordinates outreach programs for UHS. The most popular programs include Sex Jeopardy and Risky Business, a program focusing on sex and alcohol education, she said.

The unusual outreach events student volunteers plan themselves are very important, Powell said. "As a facilitator, it's a way to put the topic out there. Sexual health is a topic that needs to be discussed," she said.

Having student volunteers benefits UHS clinicians, as well as the other way around, Kennedy said.

"Working with students gives us a connection to what's going on with the larger community, but you're also helping them learn things, so having students in the program is professionally rewarding for the staff," she said.

Ustaris said the experience gained at UHS will help her in the future. "I want to be a doctor, and one thing they want to see is a lot of volunteer experiences. I'm learning more by doing things firsthand," she said.

Koehler said volunteering at UHS has pushed her to consider a career in public health.

"I don't even consider it volunteering. It's part of my life," she said.