Hal Colston
Adjunct Professor
Degree Program: Community Service, NeighborKeepers
Planting the seeds of change
Hal Colston, the founder and former director of the Good News Garage, is an adjunct professor at Champlain College, where he teaches community service courses. But now through a multifaceted project with the College, he's been working with several student and faculty teams who are helping him get his next big idea off the ground.
Champlain students are doing marketing research, surveys, feasibility studies, Web development, game development and video work for Colston's NeighborKeepers project. Colston's goal is to create a nonprofit organization that provides a circle of support to impoverished single mothers and their families. One of the goals, said Colston, "is to show these families how to live in the middle class, when all they've known is poverty."
One aspect of Colston's program is to create a "serious game" about the hidden rules of class. Called Class Rules, the interactive electronic game would be targeted at elementary school children locally and across the country. "Hopefully, we can plant the seeds of change with this game," Colston said. The game would also help fund his efforts with the impoverished families.
"A lot of this is about stories, and we need to determine how best to get them across on the Web," Colston said. He envisions a game that randomly places a team of students in a certain class-middle, upper, poverty. Then the team is handed a series of events or mishaps, such as the electricity has been cut off or their car battery has died. "They'll be given some resources and they'll have to deal with it," he said. The team will also be able to access local statistics about poverty in their area. It will give the players a better understanding of what it's like to walk a mile in someone else's shoes.
Champlain students regularly provide research, analysis, technology and community service projects for area clients. This project, however, has brought all of these offerings together around a new, nonprofit venture. "Being on the Champlain College campus is very, very important," Colston said. "There's an entrepreneurial spirit in this place and a determination to get something good done."
A television commercial parody for a country music album.