NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland – Panelists at an NCAA session Wednesday said engaging in the community is among the most rewarding aspects of intercollegiate athletics.

At Washington University in St. Louis, for example, a program called “Bears and Cubs” is paying community dividends. The program calls for three student-athletes to attend a Boys or Girls Club Monday through Thursday for 16 consecutive weeks.

Washington student-athletes are required to be part of the program, but most of the participants say they would do it regardless of whether it was mandatory.

“Our athletes have more fun than the kids do,” said tennis student-athlete Isaac Stein. “We help them with their homework. We help them with their reading. We also just sit down and play with them.”

Stein was part of a Convention session titled “Athletics Departments as an Instrument of Community Engagement.”

The children who interact with the Washington student-athletes have grown to admire their mentors.

“I lot of people hear Division III, and they think ‘inferior athletics,’ ” Stein said. “That is a misconception. But these kids don’t care about that. They just know you are an athlete, and they completely look up to you.”

The session featured a survey showing that mentoring is among the top community-engagement activities that student-athletes seek. The face-to-face interaction makes it special.

“A lot of times we are mentoring kids who might not even be thinking of attending college,” Stein said. “Having us mentor them gives us another outlook on life. I don’t think they spend much time with college athletes or college students other than when we are there mentoring them. We have a lot of fun, and it impacts those kids.”

Stein is also involved in Habitat for Humanity, an organization that builds homes for people without a place to live. He has been involved in Habitat builds where he has and hasn’t met the family. Both were fulfilling, he said, but there is nothing quite like seeing the person who will benefit from the labor.

“There was a time I was putting down bricks and I saw the lady who was going to be living in the house,” Stein said. “She was willing to be out in the cold, so how could I not be willing to help her when she is doing that for herself?”

Stein has also found that face-to-face interaction is the best way to ask his fellow student-athletes if they are willing to volunteer for community service.

“If we are at a student-athlete advisory committee meeting and I ask someone if they would like to volunteer, I get a yes every time,” Stein said. “Sometimes people are reluctant to volunteer or feel pushed into it, but once they get involved, they absolutely love it. Sometimes people need a push to get into volunteering.”