While people scramble during the Christmas season to get into the spirit of giving, some students find the charity process to be business-as-usual.
For Kelly Hart, a freshman communications major, joining the Chapman Learning Community at Kohl Hall provided a good outlet for her enjoyment of volunteer work.
“Mostly, people focus on Christmas time to help out and volunteer but this, it’s all year-round because people don’t just need help during Christmas,” Hart said. “They need help all throughout the year.”
The 230 students involved in the program will contribute more than 5,000 hours of community service before the end of the academic year, Chapman Director Madeline Duntley said. The program is designed for freshmen of all majors (as well as some transfer students) and allows students who have completed the program to stay in leadership positions.
The volunteer opportunities come with a one-hour service learning class, where students can pick from 10 different options each semester.
Many service projects are constructed with the idea of face-to-face contact with the people being helped, Duntley said.
“If you never see the people that you are helping … you don’t learn as much and it’s not as valuable an experience for the students,” she said.
Hart works with Planned Pethood to help manage pet populations and help animals find homes.
“You see how much people appreciate you helping them,” Hart said. “It’s really rewarding.”
The community, which celebrates its 15th anniversary next year, places heavy emphasis not only on community service but also building a tight-knit residential learning environment, Duntley said.
“The plan in our program is to sort of replicate a small college as much as possible,” Duntley said. “If you get to know everybody in the hall, you get to know a large percentage of the incoming class.”
Students can take classes in the residence hall from different areas of study applying toward the general curriculum. The classes are smaller, consisting of 15 to 25 students.
Many of the instructors have offices in the residence halls, which can make it easier for students to connect with the instructors, Duntley said.
“[Students] know about a dozen professors, so it’s easy to get recommendation letters and ask questions about your class,” she said.
Sally Yee, a sophomore human development and family studies major, is a community leader and said many of her good friends came from her experience last year.
“It’s really easy to just get to know people,” Yee said. “As a freshman, it’s kind of nice to be taking classes with people that are on your floor and the people you are going to see every day.”
Duntley said there are always openings between first and second semester, and students can expect to have a similar experience even if it is only for one semester.
“It would be a welcoming place because we’ll have about anywhere from 10-15 people starting up second semester that weren’t here first semester,” she said.
