Tyson-Jay Domingo | Staff Writer
On Feb. 19, 2015, ten students from Buena Vista University (BVU), along with two advisers, set off to attend the national IMPACT conference at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. The conference is one of the nation’s largest annual conferences, focusing on college students’ civic engagement. BVU was privileged to have the opportunity to attend. The students in attendance are a part of BVU’s Student Mobilizing Outreach & Volunteer Efforts (M.O.V.E.), who serve as a resource for students and organizations to increase their awareness of volunteer opportunities.
Ashley Farmer-Hanson, the Assistant Dean for Student Life and the Director of Civic Engagement, attended as one of the advisers for the conference. Attending the IMPACT conference served many purposes for her as a professional as well as the group.
“We had multiple purposes, of course to attend the conference, to learn more from professionals in the field, students, to bond as an organization and group as our little Student M.O.V.E. family. To mainly bring back the knowledge and what we’re learning from other campuses to BVU and to make it better,” Farmer-Hanson said.
The other adviser, Jessica Henrichs, is a part of AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) at BVU. She acted as a support to Farmer-Hanson and also benefitted in a more tailored way at the conference. Henrichs was able to meet with one of the co-founders of GivePulse, which is the program BVU uses to track service hours and enable engagement between BVU students and organizations and the Storm Lake community.
“I actually met him, and we had conversations about ways we can use his program more efficiently on campus, and things that I didn’t really know, even though I’m kind of the person in charge of GivePulse, so that really helped,” Henrichs said. “I also went to a session about how to have hard conversations with students about reasons why they serve. Whether it be religion or moral based, and what it looks like to major in fear and the reasons why students major in what they major in.”
Wendy Spencer, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Corporation for National Community Service (CNCS), presented one of the major keynotes at the conference. Henrichs and Farmer-Hanson both expressed the awe-inspiring opportunity of listening to Spencer speak.
“The CNCS is like the overhead of AmeriCorps, and she talked about the AmeriCorps position and jobs in the field. Disney and United Way are companies that actively seek people who are alums of AmeriCorps, so down the road that will really help me,” Henrichs said.
“To be in the same room as someone who was appointed by President Obama to come and inspire college students to serve and be a part of a national program was, I think, exciting for me because I have to do all the paperwork, I have to do everything that meets her office’s requirements. Our students are doing service because of her programs and her initiatives,” Farmer-Hanson said.
In order to be more involved in the conference, the members of Student M.O.V.E. had the opportunity to present a session regarding the structure of the organization. The experience of presenting at a national conference had a great impact on the students. Ryan Mellott, a sophomore Biology major, was among the students who attended the conference to present and learn.
“We presented about our organization, how we structure it, and what each role does,” Mellott said.
He also attended the conference with the specific purpose of enhancing his experience as a leader of BVU’s Alternative Week of Off-Site Learning (AWOL).
“I went to learn more about alternative break trips, especially because this is my first year being the AWOL vice president. Granted, our program is pretty good compared to other schools. I actually learned a lot of new stuff to implement next year,” Mellott said.
Mellott also had some good advice to offer.
“No matter how good or bad your program is, you can always go there, and you can always learn something new and always learn how to make your program better,” Mellott said.
Senior Biology major Catie Bach also mentioned her goals of attending the conference pertaining to her role as the vice president of assessment for AWOL and her portion of the group presentation.
“I am in charge of data collection and analysis. I send out surveys to participants to gain a better understanding of what is going well with the program and what we should change, so it’s mostly qualitative data, rather than numbers,” Bach said. “I mainly talked about how we’re going to be changing the reorientation aspect of AWOL. I talked about how we’re going to have a structured three-step process after we get back to try and bring things back to the community and BV. Basically, we’re going to try and get people to actually do service after they get back instead of going on the trip and having their service end there.”
Their presentation definitely did not stay inside of their designated session room. Both students made references to moments of the trip when their efforts were recognized by both old and new connections in their network. Bach also attended the Breakaway conference this past summer, which is a conference that focuses on alternative break programs, such as AWOL, and said that there were lots of crossover between the two conferences.
“This conference was a very great learning opportunity. I would highly recommend it to students in the future. Not just M.O.V.E. board members, but anyone who wants to be more involved with civic engagement, community service, or just learning more about it,” Bach said.
To learn more about service opportunities on campus and the Storm Lake community, contact Ashley Farmer-Hanson or Jessica Henrichs in the Geisinger Student Learning Center.
Photo Courtesy of Ashley Farmer-Hanson
