Champlain Embraces Community Service

By Anthony Christiano ’06, with additional reporting by Kris Surette

Amid the dynamism that defines Champlain College today -- a period characterized by new buildings, new programs, and new faces -- community service has come to play a more substantial role in many students’ academic and co-curricular experiences. Some service-learning opportunities are now well established as programs and activities, such as DREAM (Directing through Recreation, Education, Adventure, and Mentoring), which teams up students with low-income Vermont youth. Other efforts take place spontaneously, such as the tent cities that dotted the campus in November 2005 and March 2007 to raise awareness of issues facing homeless community members.

These and other initiatives demonstrate broad support for service-learning throughout the College community. The newly established campus-based Center for Service and Civic Engagement promises to spur on that momentum. Launched in fall 2006, the Center has a staff of five, including one Americorps Vista volunteer, and is directed by Nancy Cathcart. While the Center is fairly new, its core drive to effect positive change has been intensifying year by year, touching more lives in need and drawing praise for students, staffers, and the College as a whole.

Champlain Makes the Grade

In October 2006, Champlain College was named to the first President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. The distinction was designed to increase public awareness of the contributions that college students make within their local communities and across the country. Champlain was among 141 institutions nationwide recognized for volunteer efforts in the Gulf Coast region in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Champlain response included students, faculty, and staff in a variety of activities over the 2005-06 academic year. Among them were fund-raising campaigns involving innovative class projects and campus events. The College also deployed two delegations -- one made up of students, another including a faculty member and two staff members -- to the Gulf to assist cleanup efforts.

America Reads Along with Champlainers

In Champlain’s active service-learning culture, beneficial collaborations are emerging. One such pairing finds the Center for Service and Civic Engagement assisting the Education program with the America Reads/America Counts initiative. Overseen by Professor Kathy Leo-Nyquist, who is the current president of the Vermont Reading Association, the federally funded project matches Early Childhood and Elementary Education majors with students at area schools to provide help with reading. In the fall 2006 semester, 40 Champlain students participated in the program, many working with African refugees learning English as a second language.

Mentoring on the Move

One of the students who ventured to the Gulf Coast, Elementary Education major Nicole Walsh ’07 (pictured below), was recently recognized for her outstanding social-service efforts and named one of six finalists for the 2006 Vermont Student Citizen Award sponsored by Vermont Teddy Bear Company. A founding member of Champlain’s partnership with DREAM, Walsh has spent the past three years mentoring underprivileged youth in Vermont. The Bethany, Connecticut, native also holds a leadership role in the school’s Residential Life Office.

“I have fun doing what I do,” Walsh says. “I mean, how can you not have fun working with kids?” Walsh, who also student-teaches fourth grade at Orchard Elementary School in South Burlington, is in the process of completing 900 hours of service, at which time she’ll receive the Vermont Campus Compact Education Award. “I would be doing this stuff anyway,” she adds. “The recognition is just kind of a byproduct. To me, just making friends with the people in DREAM and all the kids is my award.”

At a January 25 breakfast to celebrate National Mentoring Month, two other Champlainers were recognized by area mentoring agencies for their work with youth. Student Evan Borden ’09, from Philadelphia, received accolades for his DREAM participation and staffer Karen Hendy, administrative coordinator for information services, for her involvement in Mentors for Kids.