Champlain View Spring 2010

Magazine for Alumni & Friends of Champlain College

Features

Breakaway

Champlain College students and the Emergent Media Center (EMC) faculty and staff, guided by behavioral change experts, have been working for nearly two years on developing a concept that will make the world a less violent, more economically stable place for children and youth.

"Seems like an awfully big promise, doesn't it?" says Ann DeMarle, director of Champlain's EMC. Clearly, it's an ambitious pledge, but it is one many feel DeMarle and her EMC project team will make good on.

In August 2008, with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and initial technical advice from the United Nations Development Fund for Women, DeMarle led the charge on an innovative initiative called "Empowering Play: A Project to Help End Violence Against Women," in which boys ages 10 through 13 learn behavior-changing lessons about violence against girls and women from a video game. Continue Reading >>

Making Connections

Remember when community service was just one more hurdle on the way to graduating-all you had to do was make sure you had 40 hours of mentoring or washing dishes at the soup kitchen along with all your classes completed before they would hand you a diploma and send you off into the world?

Community service, or "civic engagement," used to be simple in higher education-a counselor would match up a need in the community with students who could volunteer in their off hours or do it for class credit. A win-win for everyone, or so many people thought.

However, in recent years, higher education experts have starting putting more emphasis on making sure college students get beyond the "doing" to reach the "understanding" that people with a strong, lifelong involvement in their community often find provides lasting success. Continue Reading >>