Prominent service opportunities, such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Expand Your Horizons Fair, are organized through the Center for Community and Civic Engagement, but do you know who plans them? Students.
The students who plan and execute events for the Center are called “Civic Action Leaders.” They help educate the campus community on social issues so individuals can become active citizens in their community.
“I think the Center is a valuable resource for the university,” civic action leader Hannah Finnerty said. “We’re not just saying this is good for you to get involved in for these four years, but ideally we’re creating students who care about their communities beyond BGSU.”
Finnerty, a junior journalism major, is also is the editor in chief of the BG News. To better serve the community, changes were made within the civic action leader program this year. After eight years, the program switched from a three-year cohort model to a one-year commitment with specialized roles.
“The first year working with the civic action leaders was kind of like the Wild West,” Paul Valdez, associate director of the CCCE, said. “As we continued to evolve we became more and more structured. I think the students appreciate the clear expectations and being more specialists.”
For senior applied health science major Amy Holthaus the specialized model has given her the opportunity to be one of the coordinators of Bowling Green Alternative Breaks.
Holthaus has a history of serving with the program where students volunteer with a community partner and learn about a specific social issue during their academic breaks.
“A lot of people come back from the trips with a different mindset and a different outlook on life,” Holthaus said.
“Hearing some of these testimonies from other BGSU students that they have had these transformative experiences, that they can do work outside of the alternative break experience to really impact the community every day, has been really great to hear.”
Junior public health major Jacqui Campbell, a Community Engagement Specialists, has seen the impact of this program through her one-on-one consultations.
“Those one-on-one consultations are honestly the most rewarding, especially when the student does actually end up running with the opportunities they are presented with,” Campbell said. One successful experience she recalled was when she connected a student needing tutoring with an organization that works with Latino and recent immigrant children. Valdez said the civic action leader program has transformed into a more visible resource on campus.
“I think that’s critical because at BGSU part of the larger piece of why we exist as a Center is that we don’t want students to come here and just get a degree,” Valdez said. “We want them to be able to apply what they’re learning in the classroom to a community context so they have these skills to be able to participate in whatever community that they go to.” As these student leaders help students become actively engaged citizens they grow from the opportunity as well.
“I definitely have seen lots of students become more confident in their ability to do complex, collaborative tasks,” Valdez said. Finnerty said, “We all independently, and as a group, successfully planned a massive
event, and we keep the office running all year.
So, I definitely have gained a lot of confidence in my ability to do things without somebody looking over my shoulder.
It’s a good stepping stone into an actual workplace.” Along with confidence, Campbell said she has learned to collaborate with different personalities and community partners that vary in size. For Holthaus, other life skills stand out. “I think that experiences go beyond from what I have learned in textbooks in the classroom,” she said.
“A lot of that can come from talking with others and engaging with the community. Being able to communicate with others and listen especially, is really important with community based work.”
