BELLE ISLE STATE PARK--As some of his classmates from Franklin Pierce College were catching rays on Southern beaches this week during spring break, Mike Herrmann was breaking a different sort of sweat.

He and six other students from the New Hampshire school of 1,600 were laboring at this pristine Northern Neck park on the Rappahannock River.

Armed with picks, shovels and youthful exuberance, the volunteers helped the park staff plant shrubs and trees in campgrounds expected to open to the public later this year.

Standing in the bottom of a drainage depression, pushing his shovel through hard-packed dirt, Herrmann said he hasn't second-guessed his spring break plan for an instant.

"There's something special about living and working in a small group like this," said the senior history major. "There's a neat group dynamic. You make very close friendships that last when you get back to school."

Yeah, but what about the beaches, the bars, the parties all night long?

"That's not what I was looking for," said Anne Power, a junior majoring in elementary education. "I like the idea of helping out, giving back. That and going anywhere where the temperature was above 20 degrees."

Scott Ansevin-Allen, assistant dean of student involvement at Franklin Pierce, said he started the service trip eight years ago to give students a different sort of spring break experience.

"It's drug- and alcohol-free experience education, taken to different parts of the country each year," he said, noting that Franklin Pierce requires community service to earn a degree.

To that end, groups as small as four or as large as 11 have spent spring break the past several years restoring habitat in Florida, building trails in Tennessee, adding handicapped ramps in Texas and constructing homes on the Mississippi Delta.

"The wild times people associate with college spring breaks happen with a very small percentage of college students," said Ansevin-Allen. "But it's what gets all the attention. I'd rather that attention goes to the small percentage of students who do this for their breaks, doing public service."

The Franklin Pierce dean, who spent three years in the Peace Corps, said the spring break trip has become a fixture.