Resilience—the ability to persist, bounce back, and achieve, despite setbacks or challenges—is an important predictive and protective factor for university students’ personal and academic success. Qualitative research at one large U.S. land-grant university investigated faculty and student perceptions of how and why academic service-learning courses impact student resilience. We used thematic coding and analysis for responses from focus groups of faculty and students with recent service-learning experience. We found five key themes illustrating participants’ perceptions of how service-learning enhances student resilience, including (a) opportunities for community members, peers, and instructors to serve as models of resilience; (b) more authentic and less hierarchical relationships among students and instructors; (c) natural opportunities for overcoming challenges inherent in community-based activities; (d) real-world consequences that increased student motivation to persevere; and (e) reflection activities that further helped students perceive and develop mastery and resilience. Suggestions for practice and future research are offered.