Annual Report – Programmatic Section

 

 

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Implementation of Student Development: 

 

 Trainings, courses and meetings:  The foundation of our student development process at Concord continues to be our Introduction to Community Service course.  This is a required course for all incoming freshman Bonner Scholars, as well as any upperclass replacement scholars.  The course is designed “to stimulate discussion of current social problems, both in understanding the history and root causes of various social problems and in formulating possible interventions performed through community service opportunities.”    Listed as a special topics course in our Social Sciences Division, this is a three-hour, for-credit course and is taught by our Bonner Director each fall term.   All Bonners are required to attend regular meetings that focus on goal setting, skill development and planning.  Freshman meetings are held weekly; sophomore and junior meetings are held bi-weekly; and senior meetings are held monthly.  Additional all-Bonner meetings and social activities are held each semester to foster student interaction and a sense of our Bonner community on campus.

 

First-year Trip:  Once again this year we traveled to Washington, DC, for our first-year service trip.  In partnership with the National Coalition for the Homeless, students worked with various DC agencies that focus on feeding the hungry and homeless in our nation’s capital and providing a source of income for these individuals:  SOME (So Others Might Eat), Street Sense, Capital Area Food Bank and DC Central Kitchen.  Specifically, the students were responsible for food and meal preparations, serving meals and staffing dining rooms, sorting food donations, packaging food boxes and selling newspapers with homeless vendors.  The students were also given opportunities to explore various historical and cultural sites during our week in Washington, as well as spending time with individuals from the NCH’s Speakers Bureau.  Study and reflection guides were provided to the students and they were asked to share their perceptions of homelessness in the city before, during and after our trip.  The following poem was written by Joshua Reese, a freshman Bonner Scholar from Columbia, South Carolina, during a reflection session with David Harris of the NCH:

Excuse me sir!  Excuse me ma’am!  Spare a dollar if you can.

Straight from the streets I bring you a day in our lives,

Can you handle a day with no heat, can you live deprived?

Do you see me on this corner trying to make an honest day’s work?

Or are you to busy clutching your purse and ignoring me like a jerk?

I believe all you see is a struggling man, who doesn’t look like you,

But if we were to switch places, could you do what I do?

Could you walk in my holey shoes and wear my shirt that’s torn?

‘Cause I know I can wear your suit and beep your fifty-thousand dollar horn.

Can you sleep in my alleyway and search the night for food?

‘Cause I can sleep in your 21^st Street home and watch your flat screen tube.

But my point is not to switch with you, I just want a second of your time:

Leave your world for a second and visit me in mine.

So all it takes is one bill or just a few cents,

I’m offering more than a paper; I’m offering “Street Sense”!

 

 

Second Year Exchange:  This year we chose to send students to a number of conferences and training events rather than schedule one specific exchange.  We had students who participated in:

 

·         WV State SADD Conference in Charleston, WV, November 9-11, 2007.

·         WV Student Service and Civic Engagement Conference in Morgantown, WV,

                February 22-24, 2008

·         Against Tobacco State College & University Summit in Charleston, WV, April 11-12, 2008.

 

At each of these events our Concord students were provided opportunities to become engaged with other students from our state and region, as well as having access to training sessions for both skill and knowledge development.

 

Third Year (and Beyond) Leadership Roles:   We continued to work on developing student leadership in our junior and senior classes this year, adding two new workshop sessions to our fall agenda.   During these workshop sessions, the third and fourth year students researched, planned and delivered training for our freshman students on basic topics such as time management, conflict resolution, budgeting, active listening, conducting meetings, grant writing, mediation, networking and advocacy.   The juniors and seniors developed their workshop presentations during the spring 2007 semester, shared them with their peers during a regular class meeting, and used student feedback to finalize the presentation for delivery to the freshman Bonners during the fall term.  This was an optimal way to deliver training to our freshman students using returning students as a resource.  Of course, this was in addition to our existing expectations for our juniors and seniors to assume roles on our student leadership committee, to propose, plan and lead service activities with our partner agencies, to serve as leaders for our freshman orientation and to serve as liaisons with other student organizations on campus.

 

Senior Capstone and Presentation of Learning:  Each graduating senior student prepared a PowerPoint presentation describing the impacts of their work as a Bonner scholar and allowing them to share their best Bonner moments.  We had a Bonner Senior Retreat for the first time this year.  On April 25 and 26, 2008, we gathered at a rental cabin at Pipestem State Park and spent some time together planning senior presentations, sharing future plans and laughing over a rousing game of Cranium’s Whoonu.  The students enjoyed this opportunity to come together and celebrate each other before they left Concord.  The senior retreat is also on our calendar for the coming year.

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 Implementation of Community Partnerships: 

 

We continue to have more of an informal relationship with most of our community partners.  Informal only in the sense that we don’t have specific written agreements in place and that our communication tends to be on an as-needed basis; not informal in the sense of their commitment to our program and our commitment to their work.  Many of these partnerships have been years in the making and are based on well-established working relationships between our staff and theirs.  But we are slowly working to put more structure into these partnerships.  We will have two new VISTA members (Alex Overmiller and Jesse Call) starting work in August, 2008.  As written into our VISTA application, one of their main challenges will be “assisting community agencies to identify volunteer staffing needs at all levels of responsibility within the organization; working to develop position descriptions that capture the specific duties, skills, abilities and qualifications necessary to successfully serve in these positions; identifying potential training opportunities available to volunteers at specific agencies…”  Their efforts in this area will help us begin to put our partnerships into a more formal, written format.   

 

Also, in the fall of 2008 we will begin a new tutoring program at the Athens School.  The program will be coordinated by a senior Bonner scholar, Amber Cogar, who has been a tutor for a number of Athens School children during her tenure as a Bonner.  Additional oversight will be provided by our students who currently work at the Athens School and the tutoring will be done by our incoming freshman students.  Mr. Quesenberry, the Athens School Principal, will be coming to a number of our freshman class meetings to provide training for our tutors and provide an orientation for working at the school.  Tutoring sessions will take place on Monday and Wednesday afternoons during the fall term and Monday through Thursday in the spring.  We anticipate that this will become our on-going service site for all incoming freshman students and that we will utilize a number of returning students in the development of this site-based team. 

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 Campus-wide Culture and Infrastructure: 

 

Our Civic Engagement Minor program has been in place for two years now.  We are collaborating with Dr. John David Smith, VP for Student Affairs, and Dr. Bonnie Dorsey, coordinator of the program, to establish some assessment procedures for the minor.

The 2007-2008 year was the first year we’d been approved for a Bonner Enrichment Fund Grant.   Funding from this grant will allow us to establish a campus-wide service center, to hire two VISTA members and partially fund another staff position to support the center, to offer stipends to faculty members for course development or modification to include community outreach efforts, and to promote service efforts throughout our campus.  One of our first and current initiatives is to plan and oversee service projects for all 30+ sections of our UNIV 100 course, a required course for all incoming freshman students.  We will be partnering with various campus departments, the Town of Athens, and other local agencies such as Scottie’s Place, Pipestem State Park, WE CAN, Community Connections and the CASE/Concord Child Care Center to create meaningful service experiences for each student group.  The projects will be led by Bonner Scholars and the student teaching assistant assigned to each section of the course.  We will plan a number of Service Saturdays during the month of September 2008 with a number of projects planned for each Saturday.  We are working to make this initial effort successful so that we can make the service requirement a permanent component of the UNIV 100 course and have the Service Saturdays become an annual event.

 

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