SAC represents a three-college coalition that prepares students from Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the Universtiy of Massachusetts for community service. Since SAC's inception in 1995, members have become an integral part of CIRCLE's mission and have developed into a tightly-knit group of friends and colleagues. SAC has been instrumental in creating and developing undergraduate courses that support the Giving SEED's community service component.

Service learning courses stress preparation, action, and reflection, and allow newcomer students to explore their own background in context of cultural identity, refugee, and immigrant experience, and cross-cultural adaptation while learning and testing practical outreach skills.

SAC's ability to help newcomer youth participating in the Giving SEED come to terms with their bi-cultural existence depends on its ability to practice the collective leadership model it teaches and bridge the cultural differences among its own members. Hence, both the preparatory and reflection aspects of the courses provide avenues for personal and cultural exploration for the undergraduates. As older SAC members graduate, newer members must forge new coalitions and understandings about their common experience as refugees in America. In a safe environment, the group explores their feelings of being caught between the world of their parents and that of mainstream America.

During the active field experience, academic course work deepens SAC members' understanding of newcomer communities. The courses are uniquely self-modifying: as SAC members improve leadership and community-building skills through hands-on experience in the Giving SEED program, they continually shape course content to reflect their new knowledge. At the same time, working with the youth groups and communities drive home lessons on collaboration and leadership skills. The undergraduates learn the influence and responsibility they wield as leaders, both as role models to the youth and as emerging bi-cultural mediators in their community.

In an collaborative effort, SAC students have developed a booklet: Collective Vision. Activism in Many Voices, published in 1996.