ENGAGED Office of Civic Engagement | Allegheny Gateway Volume 7, Issue 1 • Fall 2019
THE CIVIC ENGAGEMENT EFFORT
COUNTING WHAT COUNTS See story, page 8
Table of Contents 3
Service by the Numbers — Academic Year 18–19
4
Community Connections Count: An Interview with Elizabeth Weiss Ozorak
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Counting What Counts
10 Challenging Brain Drain in NW Pennsylvania 14 Responsibility Counts 16 Professor Nicole Gross-Camp's ENV 352: Connecting the Classroom to the Community 18 Meeting Your Neighbor
Editor’s Note When people think of measuring service experiences, they typically utilize hours to evaluate their success. In the Fall 2019 issue of Engaged, members of the Civic Engagement Office offer unique and diverse perspectives of new ways to think about successful service. While counting hours can be useful in certain contexts, our office would like to encourage others to think about service in a different way. Getting to know each other through shared stories and experiences, we would argue, can go a long way in creating holistic, civic-minded graduates. Research suggests that meaningful service experiences can develop well-rounded individuals who go on to have fulfilling careers. Whether it’s a limited community engagement or a full-time service leader position, the Civic Engagement Office offers various opportunities for everyone. To find out more about what we can offer, contact our office at civicengagement@ allegheny.edu or (814) 332–5318.
—Ben Helkowski ’19, AmeriCorps VISTA Alum Lake Effects Leaders AmeriCorps VISTA Program Coordinator
ENGAGED magazine is a publication of Civic Engagement of the Allegheny Gateway in collaboration with College Relations. Editorial support: Jennifer Kessner, Gabrielle Bradshaw, Dave Roncolato Layout design: Sarah M. Bennett Cover: Inel Washington, Jasmir Wilson, Julia Imler, Avantae Gonzalez
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Engagement by the Numbers — Academic Year 2018–19
16
Fall Faculty Members Collaborating with
Gateway’s Civic Engagement Office
85
Completed
Service Projects
85
45
Student Service
Student Development
Leaders
Trainings
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Community Connections Count: An Interview with Elizabeth Weiss Ozorak
By Bethany Ozorak ’13, Davies & Fahrner Assistant Director for Community-Based Projects
A professor of psychology for the past 30 years at Allegheny College and Meadville Market House Authority board member, Elizabeth Weiss Ozorak has always been invested in the community and community-based learning for her students. Historically, her teaching and leadership connected with community initiatives and scholarship. I had the opportunity to speak with Elizabeth about why she felt community connections were important and how she engaged her students to connect beyond Allegheny.
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Tell us how you became involved with and are currently engaged in the community? I grew up in a small town where everyone was pretty much involved with everything, so it seems normal to me to be involved where you live. If you want something to happen, you talk to people, you find out what’s already going on and what
still needs to happen, and you put your shoulder to the wheel. When I moved to Meadville, I found a community that already had a great deal going on, and a lot of Allegheny students were already involved in the community through service, work, and other kinds of participation. What we didn’t have, at that point, was a curricular entry point or a way of connecting classroom learning with community-based learning. I started by involving my first-year seminar students in the
Over time, I came to believe that we needed more of a curricular structure. I talked to a lot of like-minded colleagues, and eventually a group of us sat down and drafted out the Values, Ethics & Social Action (VESA) program. That program is now Community & Justice Studies. I don’t formally teach in the program these days, but I still involve community-based learning in most of the courses I teach, because I don’t think you can teach about community without spending time in one, and this is the community we have in common. It’s also great for me to be able to draw on the expertise of others — for example, having the mayor or one of the county commissioners come to my class and explain local government from the inside perspective. In addition, students usually enjoy it, it’s memorable, and it helps them connect what they’re learning now with what they may be doing five or 10 years from now.
When I moved to Meadville, I found a community that already had a great deal going on, and a lot of Allegheny students were already involved in the community through service, work, and other kinds of participation.
community. Those seminars are ideal because the faculty members get to choose the content that interests them — it just has to serve as a springboard for writing and speaking skills.
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You have taught several community-based courses. How have you engaged students to connect with the community and what do you hope they have gained from the experience? I started out with service-learning — students doing various tasks in the community as part of the requirements for the course. I’ve moved away from that for a couple of reasons. First, with all of the great things going on through the Gateway, many students are already doing service, internships, or work study downtown, and they are maxed out with that. Second, depending on the course, students may need to learn a lot before they can truly make an impact. So I look more for opportunities where students can tap into what’s happening and we can try to apply that directly to the more theoretical knowledge they’re getting from the course readings. I teach a lot of courses about food, for example, so I’ll take students to the Market House downtown to look around and talk to the Market Master, Alice Sjolander, maybe to Tarot Bean while we’re in the neighborhood,
Elizabeth Weiss Ozorak
Story continued on page 6
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Story continued from page 5
and sometimes also to farms. I know that sometimes students will then go back and buy from those businesses, and they’ll take their friends, so it is win-win. In the past, I have had students conduct simple surveys or make brochures, at the request of the community partner. This past semester, thanks to a grant through the Great Lakes Colleges Association Oral History in the Liberal Arts program,* I was able to set up an interview project for my Community Psychology course, partnering with the Wesbury United Methodist Retirement Community. The class spent the semester exploring various aspects of the broader question, “What makes a community thrive?” And I thought, “Who better to talk about what makes our community thrive than people who have lived here for
of 2013, used those themes and excerpts from the interviews to create a short documentary video about what has helped Meadville to thrive over the years. The class had a video release party up at Wesbury so that members of the wider community could enjoy the takeaway messages of the interviews. The video link was also posted on Facebook and can be accessed on the Northwest PA Heritage website.** The most important take-away from all of these activities is that students meet and talk to community residents whom they otherwise might never know. They get to hear from people with different life stories and skill sets than their own. Maybe they’ll now be able to put a face to the local government or where their coffee comes from. They make connections in the community, and those connections make us better neighbors and partners.
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How do you think your community-based courses have benefited the community?
decades, maybe even their whole life?” So each of the 20 students conducted an interview with a Wesbury resident who had lived in the area for more than 30 years. The students then went through the interview transcripts and pulled out recurring themes. And then my son Nick Ozorak, Allegheny class 6 ENGAGED | Fall 2019
That is a complicated issue. When students do service, it’s easy to count the hours and point to tasks accomplished. Of course that’s important, but it’s not the only thing that matters. As I said before, when we know each other, we are better neighbors and better partners. Students who become invested in the community will spend more time — and money — around town.
They will get involved in a wider range of community activities. They may vote locally. They will be better informed. And they may make friends, they may find a mentor or be a mentor off campus. Those community connections are valuable in themselves. To use the interview project as an example, the students didn’t do anything that would normally count as “service.” But many of the Wesbury residents commented afterwards how much they enjoyed telling their stories and sharing their opinions. And at the release party, it was clear that the residents — not just the ones who were interviewed, their friends and neighbors too — loved that video. They loved seeing themselves represented to the world in such a positive way.
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Through your experience, what do you believe is needed for sustainable community engagement? What makes a partnership sustainable is a feeling that the efforts and the benefits are equitably distributed. The partnership also needs to be realistic in its scope. Whenever I’m partnering with a community site, I talk with folks there beforehand and we arrive at a plan that we see as mutually beneficial. It’s important to respect not just their expertise, but also their time. This is a small town. We could wear out our welcome if we took our partners for
granted. They are making time and space for us, so I want to make sure that we don’t waste that opportunity. When a community partner says, “Please come back again, next time you teach this course,” I know we’ve done something right. Institutionally, we moved far in the right direction from where we were when I first arrived in 1989. We have good curricular and co-curricular structures. We have people who are communicating regularly with partners in the area and guiding students to make good choices. There is always room for improvement, but we are much more mindful about our community connections now than we were even 20 years ago.
*Support for this project was provided by the Great Lakes Association through its Expanding Collaboration Initiative, made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. **nwpaheritage.org/tours/show/11
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Counting What Counts By Dave Roncolato ’79, Director of Civic Engagement
How do we measure the depth and the pervasiveness of student engagement in the community beyond campus? For the past 25 years, we have been collecting and counting hours of service each semester and over the summers. These numbers tell us something. They let us know that students are working and volunteering at non-profit orgaWhat is the civic engagement effort trying to accomplish and what measures would demonstrate success? Here is a description of the work of the Gateway’s Civic Engagement effort:
Civic Engagement utilizes time and resources to support diverse and multiple interests within and outside the curriculum. The office promotes a reciprocal paradigm of service that is done in partnership with, not for, the community. Supported initiatives include philanthropy, one-time service experiences, virtual service initiatives, ongoing service and social justice initiatives. We seek positive impact for individuals, communities, living situations, the environment and unsafe or unjust systems and structures.
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nizations and putting in hours off campus. They offer a comparison to other schools our size. These numbers are one indicator of the ebb and flow of Allegheny College student engagement. Counting hours will not, however, document real impact or show levels of commitment. Many questions are left unanswered when we simply count hours.
Programs are designed to both meet students “where they are at” and challenge their assumptions, worldviews, and comfort zones. Through commitment to Allegheny College students and the wider community, Civic Engagement cultivates a pervasive culture of service and civic mindedness. Deep learning occurs by coupling significant experiences beyond the campus with structured educational preparation and reflection. Social context and physical location inform initiatives. Student leadership, voice, and agency are at the core. Counting hours alone does not demonstrate a reciprocal paradigm of service because it does not give evidence that the “hour” of service actually was wanted or needed. Hours of service done to meet a campus organizational goal may put a burden on an agency or actually do a disservice to that agency. An hour of service done as a “mandatory” commitment for an organization can do harm. For example, one
Allegheny College student organization accomplished scraping and painting a large community center in an outlying community. The folks who utilize this center month after month were deeply moved by the students’ hard work and dedication. Pictures of the project made their way into the organization’s scrapbook to be shared over and over again. Contrast this if you will with another student group who was asked to paint a large center for a church in the same general area. This project was accomplished in a single day. Unfortunately, when church members returned to inspect the project they noticed “X” painted on the pane of glass. The legacy of this project was in stark contrast to the legacy of painting of the community building even though the amount of time and effort were comparable. In some cases, what community partners seek is not a large number of volunteers but a few volunteers with a specific skill set. Agencies need research questions answered
and investigations of best practices utilized by other communities. These needs require only one or two students putting in a significant amount of focused time. Two students working on a summer community-based research question for 300 hours may be much more helpful than a group of 30 students each putting in 20 hours. What is important is not the 600 hours but the impact of those hours. Are there other measures that demonstrate “a pervasive culture of service and civic mindedness” that could be employed here at Allegheny College? Allegheny College administrated the National Assessment of Service and Community Engagement (NASCE) in 2012. Our response rate of 41% was quite high in comparison to other schools employing the survey. The results demonstrated that Allegheny was not only recruiting students with a particularly high level of interest in service, but we were also retaining their commitment to service while at Allegheny. 81% of the Allegheny College students who took the survey reported doing service in comparison to 48% in the national average. Of the 21 options for hearing about service on our campus, 86% of responders indicated that they heard about service by “word of mouth”. The lead researcher of this study pointed out that our results demonstrated a pervasive culture of service at Allegheny College. He claimed that, “While other schools were
talking the talk but not walking the walk, Allegheny is jogging and not bragging.” Eight years have passed since this survey was conducted at Allegheny College. Has the pervasive culture expanded, diminished, or stayed the same? It might be time to consider offering this survey again. If we are going to start counting what counts, we will step away from counting hours of service. In place, we will count the number of onetime service projects accomplished at the request of an individual or community partner. We will capture the number of ongoing (weekly) service programs staffed by Allegheny College students. We will monitor the number of our students trained and leading as a part of the Allegheny Service Corps. This is a group of 80-plus students who are selected and trained as Bonners Leaders, Davies Leaders, Allegheny Volunteer Service Leaders (AVSLs), and Allegheny Community Engaged Student fellows (ACES fellows). We will count the number of our academic courses and summer research projects that are partnered with individuals and organizations in the wider community. Finally, we aspire to capture the names of all students who are involved, all community organizations involved, and all faculty who are involved. These indicators will reflect impact, partnership, and pervasiveness in ways that simply counting hours can never do.
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Challenging Brain Drain in NW Pennsylvania By Gabrielle Bradshaw, AmeriCorps VISTA Project Director According to CityLab, an online platform that focuses on covering the biggest ideas and most pressing issues facing the world’s metro areas and neighborhoods: Over the past decade or so, cities and metros across the United States have greatly increased their efforts to retain college graduates. College grads are a key driver of innovation and At Allegheny, graduating seniors have the opportunity to challenge retention norms by extending their time living in Crawford County and committing to a year of postgraduate service through the Lake Effect Leaders AmeriCorps VISTA Project. Lake Effect Leaders, or LEL, is a multi-county intermediary AmeriCorps VISTA Program Grant that serves as a pipeline for nonprofit leadership development. Led by a partnership consisting of Allegheny College, Gannon University, and Mercyhurst University, the program professionally equips
Table 1
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economic development, and are closely connected to the wealth and affluence of cities and metros according to a large number of studies. But Americans are much more likely to move in their mid-to-late twenties, so it’s the metros that hang on to more of their college grads that stand to gain a long-run advantage.
VISTA members to serve critical capacity-building functions in nonprofit organizations in order to eliminate poverty in northwestern Pennsylvania. Since its inception in 2003, 77 Allegheny College alumni have served one year or more with the Lake Effect Leaders. Recent data shows that roughly five to seven Allegheny College graduates serve with Lake Effect Leaders every year. In fact, Allegheny grads make up roughly one-fourth of each cohort, regardless of size (Table 1 below).
Table 2
Even more impressive is the dedication of Allegheny graduates to the Meadville community. In 2014, Allegheny graduates filled four out of the seven open Crawford County AmeriCorps VISTA positions. In 2015, they filled four out of eight open positions, and in 2016 they filled three out of five openings. Over the past three years, Allegheny graduates have filled all of the openings. This is an accomplishment that could not have been achieved without the support of the Allegheny Gateway's Career Education Office. Table 2 shows that
numbers have evened as Allegheny graduates have filled every open Crawford County VISTA position from 2017 to current day (Table 2, pg. 10). While these numbers may not seem significant, the residual impact that VISTA members leave in a community is. AmeriCorps VISTA members work towards capacity building, which means they strive to expand the scale, reach, effectiveness, or efficiency of an agency’s anti-poverty program or initiative. In addition, AmeriCorps VISTA members work to effectively generate the commitment of private sector resources, encourage volunteer service at the local level, and empower individuals and communities.
mon Roots to help develop a housing cooperative in Meadville so that low-income residents gain access to safe, affordable, energy-efficient housing and develop capacities for self and community governance. Since beginning her service in July 2018, Margaret has been able to recruit 29 volunteers to aid Common Roots in its mission and has leveraged over $60,000 in cash resources. After her tenure with VISTA ends, Margaret is interested in staying in Meadville to open her own business.
Jenny Tompkins ’18
Margaret West ’18 To provide an example, current second-year LEL VISTA member and 2018 Allegheny College graduate Margaret West is serving at Com-
Additionally, it is not uncommon for VISTA members to become full-time employees of their host site once their service term is over. Jenny Tompkins committed to a year of service through Lake Effect Leaders after graduating from Allegheny in May 2018. As the Opioid Interven-
tion Coordinator for the Crawford County Drug & Alcohol Executive Commission (CCDAEC) and Women’s Services, Jenny worked to understand the demographics of drug abuse and overdose in Crawford County, expand prevention services, and expand intervention strategies to curb the life threatening drug abuse in Western Crawford County. Jenny was hired in September by CCDAEC and now works as their grant writer & development officer. She currently administers four separate grant programs including federal, state, and local funding and spends the majority of her time managing a federal Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA) grant to support the development of prevention, treatment, and recovery programs in rural communities to combat opioid and substance use disorder issues. So, while many metros across the United States are losing college graduates, Allegheny College and the Lake Effect Leaders offer a unique opportunity to challenge brain drain and foster a community of young individuals committed to their town and its prosperity. With the help of our local agencies, LEL hopes it will continue to build the next generation of leaders for northwestern Pennsylvania.
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Service Saturday
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Responsibility Counts By Ben Helkowski, AmeriCorps VISTA Program Coordinator
Now, more than ever, organizations are hearing the call to be mindful of their global and communal impact. Corporate social responsibility has been a growing trend throughout the 2010s and will likely be an integral part of an organization’s success moving forward. This past October, an article was written by Business Insider about IBM and their initiative to build and support P-TECH schools. P-TECH stands for Pathways in Technology Early College High School, and the goal of these schools is to help create science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning programs for students in disenfranchised communities. Starbucks is another large corporation that has been applauded for their socially conscious efforts, as they have made a commitment to environmentally sustainable practices within their business. Growing success is a shared trend among these organizations. These companies are experiencing success, in part, due to their commitment to building a better society. Though comparing Allegheny College to a large corporation like IBM is like comparing apples to oranges, it is clear that creating a strong, benevolent community presence can lead to mutually beneficial relationships. The Civic
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Engagement Office, in the Allegheny Gateway, offers numerous opportunities for students and staff to get involved with community efforts and help build a more united town. In addition to being a resource of support for the community, the Allegheny Gateway’s Civic Engagement Office recognizes the impact community experiences can have on students. The mission statement for Allegheny College states that we will prepare students to live “meaningful lives by promoting their intellectual, moral, and social development and encourage personal and civic responsibility.” The Civic Engagement Office believes that to fully develop this type of graduate, the student must step out of the classroom into the community and engage in experiential learning. Fortunately, the Civic Engagement Office is not alone in this belief; the Allegheny Gateway provides additional structural support in fostering this type of experiential learning. Composed of seven offices including Career Education, International Education, Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, & Creative Activities (URSCA), the Center for Political Participation, Civic Engagement, Pre-Professional Programs, and Nationally Competitive Fellowships, the Gateway supports students as they explore their
interests and are able to translate theory into practice. As we continue to increase the number of community projects supported by our office, we show that improving the community is a priority to the College. When students work on these projects, they not only learn the value of experiential learning, but also the importance of working to build strong communities. Additionally, while Civic Engagement focuses on developing civically minded citizens, our connection to the other Allegheny Gateway offices provides students with additional perspectives in order to help them think critically about the work they are doing. Allegheny Gateway offices supplement our efforts by providing additional experiences such as study abroad, internships, fellowships, and more in order to address the complexities of the modern world. Once Allegheny students graduate, they will become the employees and leaders of future socially responsible organizations. Therefore, the aim of the Civic Engagement Office and others within the Allegheny Gateway is to educate mindful, holistic students into becoming professionals who are more than their professions.
Caption
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Professor Nicole Gross-Camp’s ENV 352:
Connecting the Classroom to the Community By Dave Roncolato ’79, Director of Civic Engagement
The class partnered with four community organizations, including the
French Creek Valley Conservancy, Center for Family Services, Green New Deal Crawford County, and the Crawford County Mental Health Awareness Program (CHAPS). Five students worked with CHAPS to bring awareness and education focused on homelessness in our Meadville area. The students in partnership with CHAPS and other social service agencies hosted a remarkable event in Diamond Park on Friday, November 15. In rural areas, serious homelessness is often not as visible as it is in urban areas. To bring awareness to the issue, 310 luminaria and mock T-shirts were visible along the sidewalks in the park. Each light represented one person in Crawford County known to be affected by homelessness during the past year. The hard work, initiative and dedication of Professor Gross-Camp paid off. An important issue was brought to awareness for our community. Beyond this, the students
in the class left the “Allegheny Bubble” and applied lessons to a “real world” issue in our community. Emily Kauchak, a student in the class, wrote:
Allegheny College and the City of Meadville have always acted like two separate worlds, but the service-learning project brought them together and opened my eyes to the injustices around me that impact my life in ways I had not previously known.
Professor Nicole Gross-Camp demonstrated the power of connecting course content with a community project as part of her Environmental Justice course (ENV352). With financial support from the Gail Howe Fahrner Fund for Community Engagement, Professor Gross-Camp worked over this past summer to connect with community partners to introduce a service learning component (SLC) to her course. The goal of adding this component was to shift students’ understanding of environmental justice as a concept or framework being studied in the classroom, to that of an objective actively being pursued in the world. Her interest in pursuing this objective came directly from former students in the same class that described difficulty in connecting their classroom activities to their everyday lives.
Environmental justice applies not just to the natural world, but is integrally linked to that of the social world as well. Housing access, mental health services, hunger and employment are all aspects of the social environment that warrant cost and benefit analysis. The efforts of Environmental Studies 352 to bring awareness and open up conversations were recognized and appreciated.
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Meeting Your Neighbor By Nikki Hawk, AmeriCorps VISTA
Ben Helkowski ’19 is the Lake Effect Leaders AmeriCorps VISTA Project Coordinator in the Civic Engagement Office of the Allegheny Gateway, and Jeniffer Gonzalez is the Bonner Program Coordinator in the Civic Engagement Office of the Allegheny Gateway. Both Ben and Jen started working in the Civic Engagement Office within the past year. In meeting them and working alongside them, I have been able to learn about their unique stories and experiences that shaped them into who they are today.
Who or what has led you to this career? Jeniffer Gonzalez-Reyes: I am a Bonner Scholar alumna that graduated from Guilford College. So I was one of the few students that were very involved in Bonner as a site coordinator, Bonner Congress Representative, Bonner Class Representative and other similar roles. I believe that James Shields, Director of Community Learning, was one of the major people that influenced me to be in my role here at Allegheny today. The way he was passionate about teaching
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and guiding the younger generation was beautiful. I have always known I wanted to work with young adults and teens mainly because people claim they are a lot or too complicated to work with. I think there’s beauty in helping someone understand that there are way more opportunities out there even for a person like themselves but also keeping in mind to bring others along with them. Ben Helkowski: Sheer chance and luck have led me to this position. Upon applying to graduate school at Mercyhurst
University, I applied for a graduate assistantship position. Unfortunately, they did not have any positions available. Yet, Colin Hurley, the Director of Community Engagement, reached out to me about an AmeriCorps VISTA position at the university. Eager for work that would help me pay for graduate school, I accepted. As a VISTA member, I showed qualities that the director of our project, Gabrielle Bradshaw, was looking for, and here I am today.
What is your favorite part about working in the Civic Engagement Office in the Allegheny Gateway?
cities around them. Seeing the work the Gateway provides for the community is truly energizing.
What's one thing you've accomplished that you're really proud of?
Jeniffer: I get to work with students, and I get to work with very passionate coworkers that inspire me to try harder everyday. I also really enjoy the atmosphere of support that we have as a department.
What's one skill that you're working on, and why is it important to who you are and the work that you do?
Jeniffer: I am really proud of gaining the opportunity to join this team of amazing hard working people and have the opportunity to motivate students just as I was to be leaders in their communities.
Ben: My favorite part about working in the Civic Engagement Office would be the opportunity to collaborate and learn from others on a daily basis. Everyone has their own unique gifts and strengths, and seeing those strengths helps me become a better worker and better person. My favorite part about the Allegheny Gateway is all the opportunities it provides for students and the Meadville community. More and more, we hear about the integral role that colleges and universities play in the sustainability of the
Jeniffer: I want to improve my communication skills with students and our service sites because I think that I am a crucial point person for both parties. Ben: One skill that I consistently work to improve is my public speaking and presentation skills. In my role, I am asked to deliver messages to our cohort, community partners, and recruits. Prior to this position, I had an extreme fear of public speaking. With that said, after practicing and consistently stepping out of my comfort zone, I have noticed small improvements.
Ben: One thing that I am proud of myself for is working a full-time job and working on my master’s degree. It has been a difficult journey with many obstacles on the way, but I would do it all over again if I could.
What's the best advice you were ever given? Jeniffer: “Dream Big.� I was always told to dream, despite my legal status, despite being first year, just to dream big and to bring others along as well. Story continued on page 20
Community and Justice students sharing favorite texts.
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ď„?
My favorite part about the Allegheny Gateway is all the opportunities it provides for students and the Meadville community. More and more we hear about the integral role that colleges and universities play in the sustainability of the cities around them. Seeing the work the Gateway provides for the community is truly energizing. Ben Helkowski
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ď„Ž
Story continued from page 19
Ben: This may not exactly be a piece of advice, but rather something important that I learned from reading, but the idea that everyone is doing the best they can given their resources and experiences. I truly believe that, on the whole, everyone wants to be ‘good’ and do ‘good;’ however, our beliefs are shaped by our experiences which lead to disagreements and conflict. By understanding this, I feel that I have been able to understand where people are coming from, particularly those who I have differences with.
Where do you hope to see yourself in five years? Jeniffer: In five years I would really like to own my own home and continue doing the work I do today. I would also like to be enrolled into a doctorate program. Ben: I talk about this question with friends quite often. There are some people who have nearly their entire life figured out and there are those who are taking life day-by-day. I tend to fall in the latter category. Therefore, the way I answer this question may be unorthodox, but it is the best answer for me: In five years, I see myself being happy, working a job that I enjoy where I am a perfect fit for the job and the organization. I see myself having strong relationships with
my friends and my family. Lastly, I see myself being mentally healthy, physically healthy, and continuously learning and growing.
What's your favorite quote and why? Jeniffer: “People think of Latina Women as being fiery and fierce, which is usually true. But I think the quality that so many Latinas possess is strength.” — Zoe Saldana. All my life I have had the responsibility of proving myself worthy as the older sibling, as a science nerd, as a physics major and as a woman. This quote just reminds me of the strength that I possess and hope to spread into other women of color. Ben: I don’t consider myself a "quote person," so I had to steal this from a friend: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” — Walt Whitman I enjoy this quote because, consistent with the theme I have been portraying thus far, it highlights the complexity of humans and nature itself.
What is one thing that you're especially passionate about? Jeniffer: I am really passionate about higher education and immigration rights
but overall I am very passionate about equal rights for all minorities. Ben: One thing that I am passionate about is continuous growth and learning. I am now 25 years old and I have probably spent one-third of my time in school, learning. With that said, I did not develop my passion of learning until recently. I found myself wanting to know more about the world once I began graduate school, and now I believe I have found my passion.
What's the most important thing that you've learned within the last month? Jeniffer: I have met the most amazing seniors that will do great things in their community but also I have learned that I was made for this role and am very appreciative that I took this chance. Ben: I am currently reading a book called On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis and I am roughly halfway through. Currently, he is discussing the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head and still being able to create a strategy. While it is important for leaders to have a plan, it is also important that they can understand different perspectives and have the ability to ‘pivot’ when necessary.
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Service
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Saturday
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Civic Engagement Staff
From left: Gabrielle Bradshaw, AmeriCorps VISTA Project Director Jeniffer Gonzalez Reyes, Bonner Program Coordinator Nikki Hawk ’18, AmeriCorps VISTA Dave Roncolato ’79, Director of Civic Engagement Jennifer Kessner, Gateway Office Manager Bethany Ozorak ’13, Assistant Director for Community-Based Projects Olivia Lang ’11, Associate Director of Civic Engagement and Bonner Program Director Ben Helkowski, AmeriCorps VISTA Program Coordinator
ENGAGED Magazine • The Civic Engagement Office, Allegheny Gateway 520 N. Main Street • Meadville, PA 16335 • (814) 332-5318
