Emory & Henry College

 

Please complete responses to the following prompts by July 11, 2011.  To upload files or documents:  Click edit.  Click Images and files in the right sidebar. Find and upload your file from your computer or server.  You can also cut and paste it in.

 

Community Partnerships:

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• In a few paragraphs, describe 1-2 outstanding examples or highlights of community partnerships and projects that were accomplished with them through the regular school year.  For example, you may choose to profile the work of a particular site team, research project, or other innovative initiative.

 

Following is a list of the major sites in the surrounding communities where Emory & Henry College Bonner Scholars are heavily involved. This year, first-year Bonners worked in site-based teams at four different partner sites. The placements in which these students worked are listed below.  

 

The Highlands Project for Public Education

The Highlands Project for Public Education is a partnership between the administrators, parents, teachers, and students of the Monroe District schools and Emory & Henry College. Working together, these partners provide a place-based, student-centered afterschool program for students in grades three through eight on the E&H campus. The Highlands Project is committed to the academic success and social development of each participant, but is uniquely focused upon the gifts and talents that each student already possesses. Bonner Scholars predominantly serve as the staff of this program. Each day nearly 15 Bonner Scholars and other students host over 50 students from the Monroe School District.

 

Emory & Henry Tutoring Program

Tutors are trained to tutor elementary, middle, and high school students in areas of math, reading, science, and social studies.  Bonner Scholars are assigned 2-4 students (depending on preference and availability) with which they work at least twice a week.  Bonner Scholars travel to local schools and tutor during “free” time, offering one-on-one help to any willing student.

 

STAR Mountain After-School Program

STAR Mountain is a pre-K through second grade after-school program for students at Marion Primary School. It is open each afternoon, Monday through Thursday. Four students from the first-year class staffed the STAR Mountain program two days each week. Their responsibilities included creating lesson plans, designing enrichment activities, reading, tutoring, and mentoring students in the Program. 

 

Boys and Girls Club of Bristol

The Boys and Girls Club of Bristol serves as a safe place for youth to gather and socialize after school and over weekends.  Bonners volunteer at both Bristol and Abingdon, Virginia club sites.  Bonners serve as tutors, mentors, and game leaders.  They organize and supervise a wide variety of group activities.  

 

River’s Way

River’s Way is an outdoor adventure camp that sponsors weekends for groups of differently-abled, high-school students.  Bonners help plan the weekend events and spend the semester learning about persons with mental and physical challenges.  During the weekend retreats, Bonners are paired with a high school student, helping with tasks from brushing teeth to completing group initiatives courses.  Bonners serve as friends and guides as their partners complete challenges that allow for their full participation in a world from which they are typically kept away.  Volunteers meet several times during the semester to prepare for the intense and emotionally demanding weekends.  They also visit area high schools and have lunch with prospective participants.

 

Valley Health Care Center

Valley Health Care is one of the largest assisted living facilities in the area.  Bonners have a number of options for work there, and VHC relies heavily on our student volunteers to offer more personal attention to its residents.  Bonners organize recreational and other types of group activities, assist with meals, deliver and read mail to residents, and build one-on-one relationships with residents who lack a core group of close relatives and/or regular visitors.  

 

Ecumenical Faith in Action

EFIA provides a number of services to hundreds of families throughout the area.  A large food bank, fuel assistance, home repairs, and a number of medical assistance programs are all based through the Abingdon center.  Bonners serve this facility in a number of capacities.  Many volunteer with the weekly operations of the food bank, which provides food to nearly 400 families a month.  Others provide transportation for elderly citizens to doctor’s offices or for trips to the pharmacy.  Still others spend time with shut-ins of the community providing in home services in order to allow family members to go out for a while.

 

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Washington County

During the school year and the summer, a handful of Bonners spend a great amount of time with their little brothers or sisters.  Most of the volunteers spend their time tutoring and mentoring.  The Bonners who work at this site, speak very highly of the impact this work has on them, and the opportunities it gives them to develop relationships with youth in need of a friend outside of their home.

 

Other Partnerships

It should be noted that two of our strongest community partnerships are with Big Creek People in Action in Caretta, WV, and Meadowview First in Meadowview, VA.  These sites provide a range of opportunities for our students from occasional volunteer to project leadership and practicum experiences.  Both agencies are committed to policy change and social justice and serve as two of our most dependable and educational partners. The town of Fries, VA has also been a focus of the Center’s work in the past year. The first-year Bonner Scholars spent a day at Fries working on town revitalization projects. Our partnership with Fries grows stronger each year and will continue to be a focus of our place-based partnerships.

 

 

Student Development:

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• Please briefly describe your Bonner Program meeting structure here.

 

• Please briefly describe your student leadership structure (i.e., BLT, interns, etc.) and any key projects or initiatives they accomplished here.

 

• Please upload a copy of your training and enrichment calendar.  Also, feel free to upload and briefly annotate any particularly useful training, education, or reflection sessions you can share with the network. 

 

 

In addition to the new models of reflection, the old style of meeting by Bonner class was reduced from weekly meetings, to bi-monthly meetings. The classes each worked on a topic derived from the developmental model and the Common Commitments. First-year Bonners explore community building and relational trust as well as preparing for the first-year trip to New York City by studying the geography and history of the city as well as discussing poverty and homelessness both in New York and in Southwest Virginia.  As sophomores begin developing the skills to be more analytical and reflective, they explore in reflection questions of personal values.  Part of this involves ongoing conversations about how values are shaped, and how values influence service and academic work.  Juniors explore the importance of relationships and the significance of relationships to their work as Bonners.  Seniors begin to reflect on their own spiritual changes and developments, connecting that to their changing understandings of service and justice.  From this, seniors then move to a consideration of their developing spirituality and an exploration of their sense of calling and vocation.  All Bonners also complete several written journals each semester, dealing with a variety of social and personal issues and the relation to their service work.  

 

1. Class Trips
1. First-Year Trip to New York City
1. Description 

First-year Bonners, for the ninth year, traveled to New York for a week of service and learning.  We left our campus early on the morning of March 7 to travel to Washington, D.C., where we boarded a MegaBus en route to New York City.

 

Prior to the trip, students spent time in reflection meetings preparing for the trip.  As a group, they learned about and discussed the general issues of poverty and homelessness, drawing on their own experiences thus far in their service as Bonners.  We gave attention to such topics as the working poor, American urban culture, cultural diversity, New York City history, geography, art and culture, and general NYC information.  

 

While in the city, we worked with a variety of programs for the homeless and working poor, including shelters, soup kitchens, and thrift stores.  Our work was coordinated through the Youth Service Opportunities Project, or YSOP.  YSOP set up a three-day work camp for our group, provided our students with an orientation to the issues of poverty in the city as well as an introduction to their service sites.  This year, YSOP let us write our own reflection curriculum for the end of each work day. This was a great success and our students responded with deep thinking to the critical questions we posed. Our work with this organization provided strong and meaningful experiences for our students.  

 

With the previous trips to New York being such successes, we wanted to give our first-year Bonners the same opportunity to experience community service in an urban setting, hoping that they would be able to see that the root causes of poverty are the same in New York City as they are in rural Southwest Virginia.  Our students did gain some insight into the issues of homelessness and poverty and made important connections between the rural and urban aspects of those issues.  By the end of the week, the students had taken part in a service experience that they would remember for the rest of their lives.  

 

Students underwent a rare educational experience, demonstrating a remarkable change in attitudes from the beginning to the end of the week.  To observe their response to questions and issues of consumer culture, social justice, homeless individuals and families, or just to the city as a whole, a movement from bewilderment and apprehension to compassion and enjoyment was deeply gratifying.  This was a transformative experience for the students.  The trip also provided many opportunities for staff to bond with the students in ways that are not possible during the school year.  We had no major discipline problems this year.  Overall, the experience was a positive one for all involved. 

 

1. Sophomore Exchange Trip to Roan Mountain with Mars Hill College
1. Description

 

In April, the sophomore Bonner class traveled to Roan Mountain State Park in Roan Mountain, Tennessee (approximately half way between Emory, Virginia, and Mars Hill, North Carolina) to meet the Mars Hill College Bonner sophomores and have a day of service and reflection. The sophomores worked in small groups to provide trail maintenance and upkeep in the park. After lunch, the sophomores met in a large group to have student-led reflection activities and discussions. The trip was a good opportunity to meet other Bonners and to learn about diversity within the Bonner Network. Over thirty students and one staff member from each school were present.

 

1. Junior Retreat 
1. Description

The juniors decided to have a junior retreat this April. The group left campus for supper in town and a reflection on the lessons learned thus far and the opportunities ahead as the juniors finish their time as Bonner Scholars at Emory & Henry. This was a very nice and low-key option for the retreat which suited the junior class well.

 

 

 

 

 

1. Advising

During the 2010-2011 academic year, both the Director and the Coordinator built and sustained close personal relationships with many of the Bonner Scholars.  Both offices keep open doors.  Often, students seek out the Bonner staff for advice and counseling on any number of issues.  During the fall semester, all Bonners were required to visit the Coordinator for a 1-on-1 meeting on the topic of their first journal prompt, regarding their hopes and dreams. We called these conversations the “Dream Conversations.” This proved to be a great way to be more involved with the students.  The open and honest relationships built with students are one of the hallmarks of this program and among its defining assets.  

 

1. Other Opportunities

Bonners also had three All-Bonner meetings during each semester in which they heard from members of the community about their stories of service, education and many other important parts of a college and life-journey.

 

1. Senior Bonners’ Capstone Presentation

The seniors spent their final spring semester reflecting on their time at Emory & Henry College and the Bonner Program.  As a culmination of this reflection process, we held the Senior Capstone Presentation in April.  The seniors worked this year to create a single presentation to the community. Their presentation centered on their lessons in service in relation the places with which they had partnered. 

 

 

Cornerstone Activities:

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• In a few sentences, describe your First Year Trip.  Include the dates, location, type of service and key partners involved (name, address, website link so that we can build a google map of trip partners).

 

• In a few sentences, describe your Second Year Exchange.  Include the partner campuses, dates, location, main activities (i.e., service, conference), and key partners involved (name, address, website link).

 

• In a few sentences, describe any Junior or Senior Enrichment projects or leadership roles that upper-class students in your program played this year.

 

• If relevant, please describe the structure for Senior Capstone projects.  Select one that you'd like to share with the network.  

 

Campus-wide Collaboration:

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• In a few paragraphs, describe an initiative or project that involved cross-campus collaboration this year.  For example, you may want to highlight an initiative (service day, awareness week, issue forum) involving faculty, career services, multicultural life, student affairs, and/or other clubs and organizations.  Or you may want to describe collaboration that contributed to improvements or success with core Bonner Program functions (i.e., recruitment, staffing, PR).

 

Serve 2.0:

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• This year marks the completion of the third of the Serve 2.0 initiative. Please provide the names and links for your program's use of any of the following platforms.  
• Facebook:
• Wiki pages:
• YouTube:
• Podcasts:
• Twitter: 
•  Other: 

 

• In addition, in a few paragraphs, describe what web-based tools your program has found most useful.  We are particularly interested in knowing which you continue to use and manage regularly and why.